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SPEECH 



OF 



HON. JOHN U. PETTIT, OF INDIANA 



ON THE 



RESTORATION OE THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 






DELIVERED 



IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, AUGUST 2, 1856, 



•' 



WASHINGTON : 

PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 

1856. 



£*»» 

^>^% 



RESTORATION OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 



The House being in the Committee of the Whole on the 
state of the Union- 
Mr. PETTIT said: 

Mr. Chairman: I propose referring — and for 
the reason, only, that it has a direct and immedi- 
ate connection with the most pressing exigency 
of legislation — to the means and motives that 
moved the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas bill; 
to the mischievous consequences, without a single 
benefit to any one, that have flowed from it, 
without intermission and with steady augmenta- 
tion; and to express, with much respect to the 
differing opinions of others, my own opinion in 
favor of repealing so much of it as shall restore 
the Missouri compromise, as the sure means of 
bringing back the national peace and happiness. 

In speaking of the Nebraska-Kansas bill, and 
in my present condemnation of it, I do not mean 
to embrace the provisions of it that are confined, 
though with many details, to establishing terri- 
torial governments for Kansas and Nebraska, 
creating functions and officers of government, and 
clothing their inhabitants with certain limited 
privileges of making and administering their own 
laws. In all these things the provisions of the 
law are well enough, or only of questionable ex- 
pediency. All persons alike, whether friendly to 
the repeal of the Missouri compromise or not, 
accede, in the main, to the propriety of this legis- 
lation. We have all long felt an honest national 
pride at seeing our civilization, rejoicing in con- 
scious freedom and strength, goingsteadily West, 
and at length beginning to occupy the unpeopled 
and almost illimitable plains that stretch away 
beyond the Missouri. The time was ripe for es- 
tablishing territorial governments there. All 
were agreed in this; and it has been no matter of 
objection to that law that it ordained governments 
for Kansas and Nebraska. Nor has it been an 
objection that, during the territorial condition, 
which is only the infancy of a State, and when, 
according to Burke's nervous expression, the 
State has not yet hardened into the bone and 
gristle of manhood, two of the departments of the 



Government, the executive and the judicial, were 
wholly lodged in the appointment of the Presi- 
dent of the United States, without any consent of 
the people of the Territories; for, by maintaining 
so much of sovereignty over the Territories, after 
their being erected into governments, the Federal 
authority has been able to repress such anomalies 
of condition, as that gross and barbarian one in 
Utah that now shocks the national sense so much, 
and to cultivate their assimilation to the States 
preparatory to admission. And, especially, it 
has been no objection to the law from the people 
of the free States, where the sovereignty of the 
people is so much a principle and a fact, that it 
delegated limited powers of government to the 
people of the Territories, who are best acquainted 
with their own conveniences and wants. If, in 
organizing the territorial governments, it had any 
fault, it was that it gave the people too little power. 
In all these respects, just such territorial govern- 
ments had been established, and just such powers 
of legislation had been conveyed to the inhabit- 
ants of the Territories, by every law creating a 
territorial government since the Constitution. 
There was no novelty in this — nothing that incul- 
cated any new prinoiple or adopted any new prac- 
tice. The Nebraska-Kansas bill, in the frame- 
work of territorial government it established — in 
its functions and offices — in its executive, judi- 
ciary, and Legislature — did for Kansas and Ne- 
braska what the ordinance of July 13, 1787, 
reaffirmed, in all its parts, by the first Congress 
under the Constitution, did for the Northwest 
Territory — what the act of June 12, 1838, estab- 
lishing the Territory of Iowa, did for that Terri- 
tory — what the act of August 14, 1848, establishing 
Oregon Territory, did for that Territory. Indeed, 
in these respects, the Kansas bill is, in words, the 
very same, principally, and where it is not in the 
very words, is without any fundamental or sub- 
stantial difference from the laws organizing the 
Territories of Iowa and Oregon. In the quantity 
of words, nine tenths of that statute might be 
permitted to stand, without grave objection from 
any quarter. It deserves, therefore, to be under- 



stood, that the general animadversion of that law 
does not extend to so much of it as only incor- 
porates in it what has been incorporated in every 
other territorial bill, has now grown into ancient 
use, and has been heartily appr6ved by the suc- 
cessful experience of three quarters of a century. 

When, therefore, I now speak of this law, I do 
it with reference to none of these, but with refer- 
ence to its popular sense, and to that great fact, 
the repeal of the Missouri compromise, that 
characterizes it and makes it badly eminent. I 
allude to it, with reference to this, its paramount 
object and accomplishment. I confine myself to 
that handful of words in the fourteenth and thir- 
ty-second sections of the act by which this great 
wrong was done — words pregnant with more 
pernicious meaning and consequences than were 
ever housed in the same compass in any statute. 

Within this definition, the Nebraska-Kansas 
bill deserves to stand accused of the public dis- 
orders that now afflict us and endanger our safety. 
The union and harmony of such a people as ours, 
wide-spread, and with different and sometimes 
conflicting interests, depends on generous con- 
cessions and compromises, and the observance 
of good faith. This law entered like a thief in 
the night, and struck down a compromise, older 
than many of us, entered into at a moment of 
public dissension like this, and written on the 
statute-book by the purest and wisest men of the 
best age of the Republic, to be read and known 
of all men as a perpetual gage of future peace, 
and taught us that public faith was only the pol- 
itician's toy. The land jyas at peace. It has 
destroyed that peace, and spread the face of the 
sky with storms. It has made a war of sections. 
It has made a war of interests. Ithas impaired and 
narrowed the privilege of American citizenship, 
not pent up in State lines, but extended by the 
Constitution to the uttermost inch of the whole 
length and breadth of the national dominion. It 
has obstructed the great highways of emigration 
and commerce, and prostituted State sovereignty 
into the oppression of the citizen. It has robbed 
him of the immunity and protection of the law. 
It has exposed him to insult, and covered his 

Iierson with indignities. It has fettered his speech. 
[t has explored his thoughts, and made his free 
instincts a crime. It has bound him in bonds, 
and shut him up in prison. It has made even 
his prison a sanctuary from the fury of its own 
engendered banditti, lawlessly exalted into un- 
questioned sovereignty. It has butchered him in 
his house, in his field, and on the highway, with 
all the atrocious and unprovoked circumstances 
of murder. It has spent the anger of its hire- 
lings and sectaries on the dumb, insensate press. 
Fearful of its truth and knowledge, it has extin- 
guished its light, and turned mankind back to 
paganism. It has taken from the citizen's house 
the common-law quality of sanctuary. It has 
razed and burned his villages, burned and robbed 
his dwellings, and desolated his fair fields. It 
bus Btopped at no enormity, unless, having ex- 
hausted its ability of wrong, it has waited to 
invent another. Over a large Territory, disorder 
and riot are supreme, and the law is without 
power. 



But the gentleman from Georgia, [Mr. Ste- 
phens,] learned, acute, persuasive — it can offend 
no one invidiously to say, that in these quali- 
ties, no one in this House excels him — said last 
week, that these troubles have not resulted from 
the Kansas law. The Senator from Illinois, [Mr. 
Douglas,] who is so much the author of this 
measure, as to have conducted it through the 
Senate, said the same thing in a report made a 
few days ago to the Senate. This last opinion 
is to be excused, as being within that parental 
infirmity and instinct that follow the poor off- 
spring, no matter how ungracious, crooked, weak, 
wicked, or criminal. 

This is my answer. The present troubles in 
Kansas originated in the purpose to establish 
slavery there. There is no doubt of this being at 
the root of all its present difficulties, however we 
may differ about the merit of the passion of the 
respective sides. The invasion of November, 
1854, had this object. This was the object of the 
armed invasion of March, 1855. This was the 
achievement, if its acts have any validity, (which I 
utterly deny,) of the so-called Legislature of Kan- 
sas. The newspapers of the conquerors glare 
with the short creed of " The South, and her in- 
stitutions." This is the avowed passion of all 
the mobs of Kansas. The blood-red flag of South 
Carolina, planted on the smoldering walls of 
Lawrence, was inscribed "Southern Rights." 
All the inhabitants of Kansas, by official lan- 
guage set down in documents laid on our tables, 
are classified into free-State men and pro-slavery 
men. 

Now, if the Missouri compromise, passed 
March 6, 1820, which excluded slavery from that 
Territory, had been permitted to remain in force, 
and had not been repealed, the question of sla- 
very there would have been prejudged and set- 
tled. The seditious malcontents from the North, 
of whom the gentleman from Georgia furnished 
an amiable sketch, would have had nothing left 
to ask, and the friends of slavery would have 
had nothing left to hope. The repeal of the 
Missouri compromise is, therefore, the cause of 
these disorders, because, in the absence of this 
repeal, none of these disorders could have oc- 
curred. This is my first answer. But I have 
another. 

For the first time, in more than two centuries 
of North American colonization, its progress has 
now ceased to be peaceful. During all this time, 
beginning at the sea-board, it has proceeded 
steadily, at first slowly, then faster, till now it 
is settling its hives of industry, and nursing the 
pursuits of Christian and civilized man, beyond 
the Missouri, and over the plains beyond, where 
the Rocky Mountains cast their shadows at 
evening. 

The subjugation of so large a wilderness has 
been a slow and painful achievement. At first 
the settlers were clustered in nests along the 
coasts a) long intervals. Settlements receded from 
the sea timidly. Every inch of progress was 
disputed by the wild beast and the savage. But 
every year sonTe new encroachment was made 
on the wilderness. At length settlements began 
to move away from the sea on system. The 



Alleghanies, through more than a dozen degrees 
of latitude, are the American Appcnines, parallel 
with the coast from Georgia to Maine, never but 
a few leagues from it, and the ocean washing 
their feet. But so slow was the progress of colo- 
nization at first, and so many and so embarrass- 
ing its obstacles, that it was more than one hun- 
dred and fifty years after Jamestown and Ply- 
mouth Rock became historical, before the rough 
escarpments of the Alleghanies were crossed, 
and population began to flow down into the val- 
ley of the Mississippi. 

Just so much, or rather just so little, was ac- 
complished up to the time of the treaty of peace 
which acknowledged independence, not as a dec- 
laration, but as a fact. This difficult conquest 
of the forest, and the savage, and the beast — of 
untamed nature, dead and living — through so 
many weary years, had the prompting of a pas- 
sion for free thought, free speech, and free con- 
science only. If this was then a sufficient reason 
for abandoning home and country, and crossing 
the stormy ocean, and facing the hardships and 
perils of a strange and heathen land, free thought 
and free conscience are now no less precious, 
when the world ought to be grown much wiser. 

Since the Revolution, the settlement of the 
public lands has gone on much more rapidly. 
The fact of independence gave it new vigor. Be- 
fore the Revolution, it was prevented by the lan- 
guage of royal charters, or fettered by severe 
conditions. The energies of the colonies were 
required to assist kings, or to resist them. But 
now, elated with conscious freedom, and pene- 
trated with the enterprise of its English ancestry, 
population began to go down the western slopes 
of the Alleghanies, and follow the rivers toward 
the sea. All the rest is a familiar story. Like 
an advancing army, with its flanks on the lakes 
in the North, and the gulf in the South, settle- 
ment has gone westward with even pace, almost 
without stages or resting places. We are our- 
selves its witnesses. We, who stopped at man- 
hood at what was then the frontier of the known 
West, have not reached the noon of life till the 
footsteps of the receding conquerors of the forest 
and prairie are lost, and our places are the half- 
way station between the East and West. 

This settlement of the public lands has been 
most rapid in the last fifty years. Fifty years 
ago, population was just entering the valley of the 
Mississippi. Now, having crossed its whole 
broad basin, it is ascending the eastern slope of 
the Stony Mountains. In the same ratio, this 
ceaseless and impetuous progress will find its fixed 
limit before the end of the present generation at 
the shore of the Western Ocean. 

I have taken this brief view of our colonization , 
partly because I shall hereafter have occasion to 
recur to the increased ratio in which our settle- 
ments are now made, but more particularly at this 
point to draw attention to the fact, that this weary 
but gigantic achievement of American coloniza- 
tion, spanning more than two centuries of time, 
and reaching over more than one half our terri- 
torial dominion, has been one of internal peace. 
It has been a great victory of peace, wrought 
by arts and not by arms. Passing through the 



elementary condition whereby Territories become 
States, and on the remote frontier, where the re- 
straints of law are worn lightly, good order has 
everywhere endured, and the public happiness 
has never been disturbed by intestine strife. 
Thirty-one States have now grown into Union, 
without a single example of civil feud or blood- 
shed. 

And why has peaceful and prosperous settle- 
ment obtained so universally as the rule ? Be- 
cause the law has gone into the Territory before 
the pioneer, and fixed the conditions which have 
prevented opposing opinions and opposing inter- 
ests from entering the settlements and carrying on 
a bloody strife for the mastery. There has, then, 
been no motive to disorder, because passions have 
not been permitted to run loose and unbridled, 
and to work out their ordinary results. A re- 
straint of jarring interests, it is obvious, is a first 
and paramount necessity to a peaceful settlement 
of the public lands. 

Kansas presents the first exception — the novel 
and extraordinary spectacle — the first spectacle 
of an American Territory passing through a his- 
tory of civil dissension and civil war. 

In contemplating the extension of slavery into 
that Territory as the immediate motive to the 
present disorders, no one is at a loss to know that 
the repeal of the Missouri compromise lies back 
of it all, and first gave hope to the friends of the 
extension of slavery. That measure was con- 
ceived, not more to restore the public peace then, 
than to prevent such a calamity as this now. It 
was in foresight of the jealousies of differing 
opinions and interests, and of the danger of sec- 
tional divisions against which the parting advice 
of the Father of his Country admonishes us as 
tending to disunion, that this sagacious enact- 
ment, at first difficult of obtaining public favor, 
but at length heartily acquiesced in, was passed, 
and established in public regard as only second 
in sacredness to the Constitution. , In speaking 
on the subject of admitting Florida into the Union, 
Mr. Clay made use, in the Senate, of the follow- 
ing language: 

" By the compromise which took place on the passage of 
the act for the admission of Missouri into the Union, in the 
year 1820, it was agreed and understood that the line of 36" 
30' nortli latitude should mark the boundary between the 
free States and the slave States to be erected in the terri- 
tory of the United States ceded by the treaty of Louisiana." 
* * * " Nothing could be more to be deprecated than to 
open anew the bleeding wounds that were bound up and 
healed by that compromise." 

The repeal of that compromise has verified the 
prophecy, and is leading along its train of calam- 
ities. But disorders are contagious. These are 
not now confined to the Territories, but have 
reached into the surrounding States. They have 
reached further, and have armed the Union into 
opposing sections. Where shall the end be? 
And are we standing now at the gulf of disunion ? 

And this is my second answer. If the Mis- 
souri compromise, which in advance prohibited 
slavery in Kansas, would, if unrepealed, have 
prevented all the agitation of it there, and left 
its settlement to be made in peace, with the 
same certainty, the repeal of that measure, re- 
moving every restraint, has marked that Terri- 



6 



tory as the battle-ground of hostile opinions, 
and fanned angry passions into civil war. It has 
invoked these passions to a bloody and violent 
struggle for supremacy, because it has not pre- 
vented them. 

Nor is the struggle that this mischievous re-t 
peal opens, a short one, or limited in its scope to I 
the Territories df Nebraska and Kansas. If this 
novel and pernicious principle of leaving the Ter- 
ritories unguarded by law, and sectional interests to 
rage without restraint for mastery, is to be persist- 
ed in, the present dissensions in Kansas are to be 
perpetuated over the whole national domain, until 
organized into States. It is a common error, that 
the effect of the repeal of the Missouri restriction 
is limited to Kansas and Nebraska. Its extent is 
far greater. It operates, at the same time, to break 
down the prohibition of slavery in Minnesota. ; 
It breaks down the prohibition of slavery in Ore- 
gon and Washington. It overrides the Mexican 
laws, which, until then, forbade slavery in New 
Mexico. It admits the patriarchal institution of 
slavery into Utah, and makes it the political twin 
of that other patriarchal institution, Governor 
Young's multiplicity of wives. It brings together 
there, for the first time in Christian lands, the 
Turkish slave bazaar, and the Turkish harem, 
and bids them live in love together under the 
sanction of our laws; for, if the Missouri com- 
promise, which prohibited slavery in Kansas and 
Nebraska, became inoperative and void, because, 
in the language of the Kansas act, " it was in- 
consistent with the principle of non-intervention 
by Congress with slavery in the States and Ter- 
ritories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, 
commonly called the compromise measures," for 
the like reason, and to the same extent, and by the 
vigor of the same Kansas act, all these prohibi- 
tions in Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Utah 
and New Mexico, became inoperative and void. 
Over all these, if unrestrained, the war for sec- 
tional supremacy is to go on. Such is the fair 
field for concpiest, larger in area than all the or- 
ganized States, to which slavery now turns, lured 
on to attempt it by avarice, which is always the 
energetic force of slavery, and impelled from 
behind, according to the assurances of another 
gentleman from Georgia, [Mr. Warner,] by the 
necessity of its condition, which only leaves 
slavery prosperous where it has room. Each 
new Territory, as it fills with population, is only 
the battle-field changed, and without the acquisi- 
tion of another foot of territory, here is ample 
room and verge enough, if the doctrine of the 
Kansas bill is to be maintained, for a half century 
of civil war. 

And no small weight of interest and passion 
will lie thrown into this struggle. In pursuing 
its steady purpose of aggrandizement, slavery 
is vigilant, undivided, untiring, unscrupulous, 
slow to be satisfied, abundant in resources; for 
slavery extension is, in its most odious form, the 
war of capital on labor, tin' oppression of In-'' 
labor and honest opinion by the influence of 
wealth; a war as old as society, and as inexora- 
ble as the lust of money and power; most odious, 
oise it begins by trampling under foot the 
humanities of life. Slaves are the masters' capi- 



tal, and increase in value as new fields of employ- 
ment are opened. Demand for them is stimulated 
— prices get up. To make the rich richer — to 
swell the coffers of the rich, — these are the only 
motives to slavery extension, but at the terrible 
expense of the miseries of the life of slavery, of 
the ignorance and degradation of those who are 
not slaveholders, the paralysis of industry, the 
fast impoverishment of the soil, and the ultimate 
but speedy decrepitude of the State. Governor 
Wise, of Virginia, well known as a performer of 
political gymnastics, in a late political epistle, 
commending Mr. Buchanan for voting to extend 
the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific 
ocean, which he says, notwithstanding, was a 
very unconstitutional thing in him, states the 
matter persuasively to Virginians as follows: 

' ; The cost of not running that line to the Pacific may be 
valued thus to Virginia : We now get a thousand dollars 
for a sound slave ; we would then have gotten from three 
to five thousand dollars for an operative in the gold mines 
of California; four hundred thousand multiplied by five 
thousand, or even three thousand, will show our immense 
lo-s. One billion of dollars would not compensate Vi(ginia 
for her loss." 

To whom is this argument and eloquence of 
avarice addressed? Who is to be benefited by 
the extension of slavery into virgin fields? The 
slave? No. Slavery extension predestinates 
him to banishment, and to perish in the bondage 
of a foreign master, away from his place of birth 
and the love of kindred — instincts superior even 
to the base condition of servitude, and which is 
all that slavery leaves him but the love of heaven. 
The millions in the slave States who are not 
slaveholders? No. Too poor to own slaves, 
their labor degraded, abridged, and oppressed, 
by the competition of slave labor, which is un- 
paid labor, and, therefore, cheaper labor, and so 
far subject to its dominion, they are classed down 
to a thud estate, and left without the dignity and 
consideration of a middle class. The bouth 
witnesses a continual exodus of her best children 
into the free States to escape its blight. This is 
the prompt Nemesis that avenges the cruelties of 
slavery, and these, in turn, fill the firm ranks 
against its further aggression. They are the 
exiles of slavery remonstrating against slavery. 
These are no gainers by it. Is it the free millions 
of the industrious North? They could gain no 
more than they already had. By your fathers' 
compact and ours, the whole land was made the 
patrimony of freedom, and the Missouri compro- 
mise is the deed of title. 

And so, slavery is to be extended, not for the 
cause of morals, or freedom, or knowledge', but 
to add billions of dollars to the treasury of the 
slave proprietors of.Virginia and the South. The 
dollar has become better and greater than the 
man. The day of boundless riches tor Virginia 
sets in. Her people — such as are slaveholders, 
1 mean — are now to grow rich by no such vulgar 
and ordinary means as labor — by industry or the 
arts — by the farm, or the factory, or the shop, or 
the ship; but, obviating all such common usages, 
they are to grow rich by statute. The ( low mor's 
message will make annual acknowledgment, as a 
grateful Grovi rnor should, for the bounty of the 
season, and the successful husbandry of the 



human crop; for if to extend slavery to the 
Pacific, south of 36° 30', would add billions of 
dollars to this hearty old Commonwealth, the 
Governor of Virginia — God bless the Old Domin- 
ion for the mother she has been, though long 
since past child-bearing — may be excused for" 
some extravagance, when, after the whole bound- 
less continent is hers, figures are unable to tell all 
the money she has made by statute and her ancient 
trade of constitutional construction.* 

Now, this is the modesty of the thing. There 
is but one slaveholder to every sixty-seven of 
the whole American population. Is the whole 
commonwealth of the public lands, the common 
riches of the people of all the States, to be in- 
accessible to the sixty-six, and shall they look 
on .mute, and are they bound to a contented 
state of mind, while their sixty-seventh neighbor 
takes all of it to himself? Is this the equality 
of the States ? Is this the equality of the citizen ? 
Is this the cathedral definition of the late political 
council of Cincinnati, of what is the just and 
equal privilege of American citizenship? For 
these are questions to be asked, when the vocabu- 
lary of the language has been turned upside down, 
and words have lost their ordinary meaning, and 
piracy, by the Ostend manifesto, has been exalted 
among public virtues, and the sovereignty of the 
people is the cruel and sanguinary conquest of a 
mob, and free speech is opinion silenced by the 
terror of the butcher-knife and revolver, and free 
opinions are crimes. 

And here is some more of the modest expect- 
ations of the extensionists. The fourteen mil- 
lions of the free States are now limited to 612,597 
square 'miles. According to the opinion of the 
late Mr. Pierce, who would again say so if he 
were now alive, this is the uttermost limit of the 
free territory. He said as much in his late mes- 
sages, except as freedom fought for it, and con- 
quered it. This, then, is a boundary as well fixed 
as the shore of an ocean. All the rest is the con- 
stitutional prerogative of slavery. But the slave- 
holding States have already a larger area than the 
free States. They already engross 851 ,508 square 
miles; and, not content with this, slavery now 
arrogates to itself the exclusive ownership of the 
remaining 1,472,061 square miles of the public 
lands now unorganized into States. The nine and 
a half millions of the slave States now claim, for 
the profit of that institution, three times as much 
territory as is enjoyed by the whole fourteen mil- 
lions of the free States. 

But we do wrong in speaking of nine and a 
half millions in the South, interested in the ex- 
tension of slavery. From this number, at least 
the three and a half millions of slaves are to be 
excluded; for they have no hopes, interests, nor 
happiness of which the human law takes notice. 
The slave is never a substantive — is always an 
adjective, a legal fixture of his master. 

But even the remaining six millions of the slave 



* Mr. J. C. Underwood, of Virginia, at the New York 
Tabernacle, lately stated the annual export of this staple 
from that State to be twenty thousand of the commercial 
value of twenty or twenty-five millions of dollars. 



States are not interested, not to say in the exten- 
sion only, but in the existence of slavery. For 
even there the non-slaveholders gain nothing and 
lose much by it — in the value of their lands — 
much in the wages, and everything in the dignity 
of their labor, in social importance, in political 
importance, in the means of education, in every 
thing pertaining to moral and material prosperity. 
None of these are to be counted among its bene- 
ficiaries. 

Who, then, are the gainers ? Of our whole pop- 
ulation of twenty-three millions, who are inter- 
ested in maintaining and extending it? The three 
hundred and fifty thousand slave proprietors, and 
their necessary retinue of slave merchants and 
the artisans of that novel branch of republican 
industry, the manufacture of whips, chains, and 
coffles. The shareholders of this pretentious in- 
terest have the compass and selectness of a tea 
farty. And what is the character of this gain ? 
s ignorance instructed, knowledge fostered, vice 
restrained, suffering soothed, labor dignified and 
rewarded? Is it a gain in that riches that has no 
expression in numbers — the moral, material, and 
intellectual happiness and prosperity of a people? 
Does it augment the national strength, and exalt 
the national character? Nothing of all this. Gov- 
ernor Wise has imprudently tattled in a public 
letter of the true and only reason for extending 
slavery — that there is money in it. The single 
gain of giving exclusively to three hundred and 
fifty thousand proprietors of an extraordinary 
property two and a quarter millions of square 
miles of the public domain, while the fourteen 
millions of the North, and the non-slaveholders 
of the South, are limited to one fourth of this 
quantity, is all told in dollars and cents — in the 
decimal currency, as it ought to be. 

This is the short logic of the counting-room; 
but it presents without abridgment or diminution 
the whole argument in favor of the patriarchal 
institution. But the arithmetic of the executive 
of Virginia is worth pursuing, and especially in 
connection with my present object, to present the 
comparative forces and resources of the two par- 
ties that are now invited to struggle for the con- 
trol of the public domain — of free industry, 
backed by civilization and humanity on the one 
side, and a mere barbaric riches in slaves on the 
other. There are now four millions of slaves. 
Grant — much less than his excellency claims, 
but what is much nearer the truth, and certainly 
no extravagance of it — that, for the reasons given, 
the average commercial value of the slave has in- 
creased three hundred dollars, and more than a 
thousand millions of dollars are added by acts of 
national legislation to the riches of the South; 
and not to the whole South, for a benefit, though 
sectional, if equally conferred, would be more 
tolerable, but to a self-appointed, inconsiderable 
section of a section, already so powerful and oli- 
garchic as to exclude almost all others from pub- 
lic emoluments and appointments. This large 
influence of money, and these resources, ample 
as a kingly treasury, are bent to the propagand- 
ism of servitude, and the extirpation of freedom 
from the public domain. That measure of public 
justice and humanity, the homestead bill, per- 



8 



ished in the Senate Chamber, because the slave 
interest demanded that it should die. 

I have thus attempted to attract attention to 
the Missouri compromise, as a sagacious meas- 
ure long ago deliberated and ordained, and main- 
tained since, as a sure means of preventing the 
agitation of this vexed and irritant subject of 
slavery in Kansas. I have alluded to the oppos- 
ing interests and passions likely, in the absence 
of such a legal prohibition, to be drawn into con- 
flict with each other — to the breaking down of 
that barrier, as conducing inevitably to the civil 
disorders prevailing in that unhappy Territory, 
unequaled in enormity by any mpdern example 
of public crime — to the almost illimitable public 
domain, of which Kansas and Nebraska are only 
a fraction, exposed by it to the introduction of 
slavery and the exhibition of this reign of riot and 
civil war — to the protracted and desperate struggle 
it promises, as the field of strife shifts with the 
progress of our colonization, and now, at length, 
to the large and aristocratic influence of riches in 
slaves, that seeks to enter as the controlling ele- 
ment in the contest. Such is this modern war, 
to give it its true name, of the few against the 
many — of privilege and caste against poor, but 
honest industry and numbers. 

The present is imminent — the future is full of 
evil portents. No one now attempts, as was done 
a few months ago, to hide or deny the deplorable 
disorders in Kansas. Senator Mason calls it 
" anunfortunate state of things. " Senator Doug- 
las talks of " civil war in Kansas," and of 
"restoring peace." Few attempt their pallia- 
tion. They stand confessed, and, behind them, 
is the mischievous cause, the repeal of the Mis- 
souri restriction. A whole people rouses itself 
indignantly at this wrong to liberty, justice, and 
public faith. The conspirators against the liber- 
ties of Kansas turn pale in the presence of an 
incensed nation, and at the energy of the passions 
they have roused and invoked, but which they 
are too infirm to master. Like the audacious 
fisherman of the Arabic story, they have raised 
a spirit gigantic, menacing, cruel, and that threat- 
ens to destroy them, and which they can neither 
soothe nor subdue. 

What is the remedy for the evils of misgov- 
crnment and crime in Kansas? This is the prac- 
tical question. It is, in other words, the alarmed 
and pointed interrogation of the gentleman from 
Tennessee, [Mr. Smith.] " I believe," he says, 
" citizens of both sections have acted imprudently 
in reference to the difficulties which now exist in 
the Territory of Kansas. This is not the time 
to discuss the causes of these unfortunate difficul- 
ties, which are fast bringing into disrepute the 
fair fame of our Republic. They must be stepped, 
and the question is, how is it to be done?" I an- 
swer, restore the Missouri compromise. Ey this 
easy means make slavery agitation impossible. 
Bring back that healing measure, and you bring 
back the public peace, and strengthen the bonds 
of union, and reestablish our family love. The 
old Latins, a sensible set of antique gentlemen, 
used to speak of the public welfare as the public 
health. We were hearty, cheerful, happy, at 
the peaceful sundown of Mr. Fillmore's adminis- 



tration. The medicine to the State diseased that 
is now needful is, to restore us to that condition, 
and the public health will be restored with it. In 
his message, dated August 14, 1848, approving 
the bill erecting the Territory of Oregon, Mr. 
Polk used the following language: 

" In December, 1819, application was made to Congress, 
by the people of Missouri Territory, for admission into the 
Union as a State. The discussion upon the subject in Con- 
gress involved the question of slavery, and was prosecuted 
with such violence as to produce excitements alarming to 
every patriot in the Union. But the good genius of concil- 
iation, which presided at the birth of our institutions, finally 
prevailed, and the Missouri compromise was adopted. The 
eighth section of the act of Congress of the 6th of March. 
1820, ' to authorize the people of the Territory of Missouri 
to form a constitution and State government,' &c, pro- 
vides : 

" ' That in all that territory ceded by France to the Ufiited 
States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of 
36° 30', north latitude, not included within the limits of the 
State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary 
servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be. 
and is hereby, forever prohibited : Provided, always, That 
any person escaping into the same from whom labor or 
service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the 
United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and 
conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service 
as aforesaid.' 

" This compromise had the effect of calming the troubled 
waves, and restoring peace and good will throughout the 
States of the Union. The Missouri question had excited 
intense agitation of the public mind, and threatened to 
divide the country into geographical parties, alienating the 
feelings of attachment which each portion of the Union 
should bear to every other. The compromise allayed the 
excitement, tranquillized the popular mind, and restored 
confidence and fraternal feelings. Its authors were hailed 
as public benefactors." 

" Ought we now to disturb the Texas and Missouri com- 
promises? Ought we, at this late day, in attempting to 
annul what has been so longestablished and acquiesced in, 
to excite sectional jealousies and divisions, to alienate the 
people of different portions of the Union from each other, 
and to endanger the existence of the Union itself r" 

Is not the public mind again disturbed, in con- 
sequence of the repeal of the measure that then 
induced this haughty executive panegyric from 
your and my late political friend and patron ? Are 
not our attachments curdling into estrangements, 
and affections and alienations shaping themselves 
to geographical boundaries? Then, this is the 
appointed time for that generous measure of sec- 
tional compromise and sacrifice to reexist and do 
its pacific office. Inert and silent, though preg- 
nant with power, it endured more than a third of 
a century, a pledge of public peace. Banished at 
an evil time, but restored and exalted, by com- 
mon consent, at this season of disquietude and 
alarm, to its former place of just dignity among 
our statutes, it is now capable of being not only 
the gage, but the agent and executive of peace. 

The South is rescued from the shame of the in- 
ception of that measure. But it is obnoxious to 
the fault of having permitted it, when the whole 
North stirred in opposition to it, and it was 
known that some of its representatives wen 
likely to be false to their own engagements, and 
the wishes of the North. That repeal could only 
be useful to the South, if quietly acquiesced in. 
Now that the struggle for supremacy has com- 
menced, is it certain that the object of making 
Kansas a slave State will not fail, when firmly' 
opposed by equal energy, and endurance, and 



9 



superiority of numbers? And, if the plan suc- 
ceed, what then? It is something that the South 
will have lost much of the moral support of its 
northern sisters. But it is much more, that it 
shall have first given this flagrant lesson of the 
vanity of public faith; for, it need not be dis- 
guised, it will be met in that spirit. It will be 
left without assurance of that part of the Louisi- 
ana purchase yet unorganized, south of 36° 30'. 
The third clause of the joint resolution of March 
2, 1845, for the annexation of Texas, prohibited 
slavery north qf the same line in Texas, and pro- 
vided, in the same section, fo? the admission of 
four new States by her consent and the consent 
of Congress. The first part of the section is cer- 
tainly repealed by the Nebraska bill, and the 
North will demand in justice, that if one half of 
the bargain is disclaimed and annulled, the other 
half shall go down with it. Such is the construc- 
tion that will be put upon it. There will, then, 
be no subdivision of Texas. Will the South be 
content with this ? 

But this measure is more distasteful to the North . 
Guarded by this compromise, Kansas and Ne- 
braska were long looked to as the appointed field 
and direction of its expansion. In the spirit of 
the letter of Charles Pinckney, written on the 
night of its passage, dated " Congress Hall, three 
o'clock at night," in which he said theslavehold- 
ing States had gained a great triumph, had added 
six or eight members to the Senate, and that the 
North would gain nothing " for a great length of 
time," the North has bided its time and its ad- 
vantages long'postponed, and rested in security 
on this act of national faith. This public infi- 
delity now has disturbed its dream, and drawn its 
people from the places of peace and industry they 
love; like a guard called at midnight to stand on 
their defense, and prevent encroachments for the 
future. 

But the South answers, while availing itself of 
this breach of faith, and attempting to obtrude 
slavery on Kansas, that its restoration is useless, 
because its moral power is gone. Is this so? Is 
the compromise of 1820 remembered with common 
scorn, as a thing of no obligation, and of ques- 
tionable wisdom and patriotism? On the other 
hand, does not the whole Union pay homage to 
the benefactors who ordained it, and mourn the 
age of peace that expired with it? And if the act 
deserves shame and obloquy, do these extend to 
its authors? Are Calhoun, and Pinckney, and 
Clay, and Monroe, to be lost from the patrimony 
of national honor, and perish from the public love, 
or live only to be the ribald and familiar jests of 
fresh placemen, complaisant with consequence, 
who try to strut in extraordinary stature in their 
places ? And the fathers of the Republic, who 
were present, and helped to lay its deep founda- 
tions, and often laid down, byline and plummet, 
the constitutional power and duty to exclude 
slavery from the Territories, — are they, too, to be 
comprehended in the catholic scorn this school of 
charlatans is visiting on the whole past? 

The Missouri compromise is without legal effi- 
cacy, but is shorn of none of its moral power. It 
• has its place in history and its hold on the public 
heart. It is felt not to be lost, but only banished. 
* 



It will be regarded the more because it has seemed 
to be in hazard. Its restoration will be hailed a* 
the augury of permanent peace. It will kindle 
illuminations, and fill the land with gladness, and 
the whole nation will go forth to greet it, as old 
Athens at the crisis of her fate, when the barbaric 
host cast its shadow over all her seas and plains, 
poured out from all her gates to bring home the 
banished Aristides. 

This is needful for two reasons — in justice to 
the injured North, to rebuke her betrayers, who, 
false to representative duty, and for purposes of 
personal aggrandizement, made commerce of the 
national honor and happiness; but, for the greater 
reason of reassuring good faith and generous 
compromise, as the only means of lasting har- 
mony. 

Such is republicanism to-day. It hath this 
extent. It has no purpose to offend or assail the 
South, for it would then be sectional. It does 
not espouse any local or limited interest of the 
South, for that, too, would be sectional. But 
it has a national regard for the Union and the 
interest of all the States alike. It holds them 
by the exact limits established a third of a cen- 
tury ago by national men, and asks no more, 
and will take no less. It accedes to the very 
terms that the South, jealous of honor, made 
for itself. So determined, it will plead its cause 
at the forum of the people for its faith and jus- 
tice, and allow excellence, in no quarter, for su- 
perior devotion to the Union. 

If it was right and constitutional to pass this 
act in 1820, it is right and constitutional now. A 
modern philosopher, given to puzzling himself 
on all sorts of abstractions, finally reasoned him- 
self into universal skepticism, and grew into the 
belief that nothing whatever existed, mind or mat- 
ter, and wrote a book on the subject. Our con- 
stitutional expounders, in this age of searching 
analysis, have made almost as much progress, 
and reasoned away most of the constitutional 
powers, as well as the solid bottoms they were 
supposed to stand on. Among other things, they 
have explored the powers of Congress to govern 
its own territory, and especially on the subject of 
slavery there, and find it all unconstitutional. 
Mr. Jefferson thought the Constitution gave no 
power to acquire territory. They have no diffi- 
culty in finding in the Constitution abundant 
power to acquire territory, and understand the 
whole subject much better than Mr. Jefferson. 
Jackson, Webster, Calhoun, Polk, Clay, were in 
favor of the principle of the Missouri compromise; 
believed that Congress had the power, after ac- 
quiring territory, to govern it, as a farmer has a 
right to use his farm as he pleases; exclude slavery 
or not; and acted on it. These expounders know 
better, and only pity them for living and dying 
in the delusion. I have nothing to say to these 
constitutional schoolmasters. I am content to 
stand by the faith and practice of the fathers and 
of the pure age of the Republic. 

But there is a class which goes further, and 
challenges our public history as against the 
power. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Ste- 
phens] lately made the following statement: 

" I say that the fathers who made this Republic, irom the 



10 



beginning of it— from the date of the Constitution and up to 
1820, never, in a single instance, exercised the power of 
excluding the emigration of slaves from any of the States 
of this Union to the common territory." 

I venture to confront it, and, in no offensive 
manner, to contradict its historical accuracy. I 
deny it altogether. I aver, on the other hand, 
that in theory.and practice, by reason, usage, and 
precedent, under the Confederation and under the 
Constitution, from the beginning of the Govern- 
ment to the passage of the Nebraska act, the 
power of Congress to legislate for the Territories 
on all subjects, including the particular subject 
above named, has been asserted and maintained. 
This is a broad proposition, but its truth is im- 
pregnable. And when government has been 
maintained through the Territorial Legislatures, 
or through officers of territorial creation, it has 
been by the express authority of Congress, and 
by the use of its own delegated power, which it 
could take away at pleasure. Congress has 
always used this power directly or by indirection. 
It is evinced in our legislation, where its instances 
are strewn all over its pages — it has been main- 
tained in judicial decisions of all our courts, State 
and Federal, from the highest to the lowest. It 
has been maintained in the executive administra- 
tion of our laws. It is the salient fact of the his- 
tory of our Territories, standing out distinguished, 
like a promontory. And I challenge the proof of 
the gentleman's proposition by examples. At 
least, let history be sp; red from wrong for mere 
party objects. 

I do not mean to go over the large range of 
proofs that have been so often told and illustrated, 
but to allude only to the less familiar history of 
my own State. 

Sir, that original Abolitionist, Thomas Jeffer- 
son, who, not content with stirring up rebellion 
against King George, and setting the country in 
a blaze, went abroad publishing what are now 
considered fanatical sentiments of human free- 
dom and progress, for which, if he were in Kan- 
sas to-day, he might enjoy a prison, with an iron 
ball and chain fastened to him, and a Bible to 
improve his morals by, according to the second 
and fifth sections of chapter twenty-two of, that 
amiable code of laws — Thomas Jefferson inau- 
gurated legislation to exclude slavery from the 
public lands. Restriction and intervention began 
with him. The gentleman from Georgia, while 
reading the Holmes letter, which I shall hereafter 
refer to, said he wanted from Jefferson no ab- 
straction, but something practical. Here it is. 
On the 1st of March, 1784, Jefferson, as chairman 
of a committee to devise a scheme of government, 
in the language of the Journal, for " the trans- 
montane half'of the American Republic," com- 
prehending the region beyond the mountains, 
from the north boundary of Florida to the lakes 
and the Mississippi, reported a bill to the Con- 
gress of the Confederation, subdividing it into 
seventeen States, and containing the following 
section: 

" Eighth. That after the year 1800 of the Christian era 

there snail in' neither elavery nor involuntary servitude in 

. nv of the .-aid States, otherwise than in the punishment 

Of'crnn.'- of Which tin' party shall have been duly con- 

d to have been personally guilty. : ' 



That is practical. It applied to every inch of 
the public lands from the lakes to Florida. It 
did not stand, in the language of the gentleman 
from Georgia, " on the principle of a division of 
the Territory." It gave all to freedom, for that 
was the impulse and the end— the beginning and 
the final cause of the revolutionary struggle. It 
went further, and organized them as States, and 
said slavery should not exist there, when organ- 
ized into States. • 

This section failed, from the accidental absence 
of one New Jersey member, seven States being 
necessary to pass it. On what trifles great events 
depend ! If it had 'passed , the Alleghanies would 
have been the western wall of slavery. 

The government of Territories was then a new 
business; and the ordinance of 1784, passed on 
the very day of the Virginia grant, and when it 
was supposed it would include Kentucky, was 
too clumsy to work well. This led afterwards 
to the celebrated ordinance of July 13, 1787, the 
corner-stone of the prosperity and happiness of 
the Northwest. It differed from the former, in 
making the expulsion of slavery immediate, and 
in being limited to the country between the Ohio 
and Mississippi. It was reported by a com- 
mittee, consisting of Carrington and Richard H. 
Lee of Virginia; Nathan Dane of Massachu- 
setts; Smith" of New York; and Keen of South 
Carolina,— names familiar to us as household 
words. It was reported in the language of the 
former act of Jefterson. It was passed by the 
vote of all the States, and of all the delegates 
from all the States but one from New York. It 
again prohibited slavery forever from what was 
then the whole national domain — and not only 
while the Northwest remained a Territory , but 
after it should be organized into States. It did 
more. The prohibition entered into territory 
where slavery was then lawful, and where it in 
fact existed , and expelled it violently from the ter- 
ritory. It disdained the existing property in hu- 
man suffering and human life. It was ignorant 
of that new equality of the States, by which a 
small class of patriarchs, whether from Utah or 
South Carolina, shall occupy the public lands, 
filled with natural gifts fit for freemen, to the in- 
convenience and expulsion of everybody else, 
I This kind of republicanism was then national. 
Every State was for it. Can the gentleman from 
Georgia tell the time when it became sectional, 
or ho°w it became so, or who made it so? This 
first child of freedom was borrt just as it was, 
wholly free from the common will of the whole 
Uni«>n. 

But it will be answered, that this ordinance 
was passrd by the Congress of the Confederation, 
and before the Constitution. Grant it. This 
makes the case much stronger. The Congress 
of the Confederation, like the present Congress 
under the Constitution, could only use powers 
expressly granted. This Congress can do nothing 
not permitted by the Constitution. That Con- 
gress could do nothing not permitted by the 
Articles of Confederation. But, by the Articles 
of Confederation, no power of any-kind, in ex- 
press words, was granted to acquire or to gov- 
ern territory. It was attempted to derive it in the 



11 



power to collect revenue, and in the power to 
regulate intercourse with the Indian tribes. But 
this was abandoned, and the right was rested, 
where the Supreme Court of the United States 
now rests it, under the Constitution, on the better 
principle, that the ownerof the territory, of course, 
has the right to govern it for all purposes. 

If, therefore, the Congress of the Confedera- 
tion, when the power to govern the Territories 
was, in terms, so doubtful, could, under that in- 
strument, enter that Territory, expel slavery and 
substitute freedom, much more can it be done 
under the Constitution of the United States, which 
conveys express power to Congress to make all 
needful rules and regulations for the Territories 
and other property of the United States. 

It deserves, too, to be remembered, that the 
Congress that passed this ordinance, and the con- 
vention that framed the Constitution, sat at the 
same time, and that many of the members be- 
longed to both, and knew very well, nobody 
better, what powers the Articles of Confederation 
lacked, and what powers it was necessary that 
the Constitution should have. 

But this doubt was very soon put to rest. The 
first Congress under the Constitution, composed 
in part of the men who had framed that instru- 
ment, met, and, on the 7th of August, 1789, 
reenacted the ordinance of 1787, without a divis- 
ion-. Washington, who had been the president 
of the convention that framed the Constitution, 
approved the act. Who knew better the signifi- 
cancy of that instrument than those who made 
it? than he — I express itall when I speak the name 
of Washington— who, in presiding at the work 
of its creation, gave the Union hopes of a duration 
more lasting than brass or marble ? Washington, 
by this act, gave the consent of his judgment 
that it was constitutional and right, and consistent 
with the genius of American government, to 
expel the political wanton, slavery, from the 
national territory. 

The preamble of that act is worthy of notice: 

•'' Whereas, in order that tin' ordinance of the United 
States, hi Congress assembled, for the government of the 
territory northwest of the river Ohio, may continue to have 
full effect, it is requisite that certain provisions should be 
made, so as to adapt the same to the present Constitution 
of the United States. Be it enacted," &c. 

The act then provides that the Governor of 
the Northwest Territory shall communicate to 
the Congress of the United States the information 
required under the ordinance of 1787, and that 
then the President shall appoint officers, &c. 
Mr. Pierce, in his late message, says that this 
ordinance was repealed on the adoption of the 
Constitution. This is worthy of the President's 
ability at constitutional construction. If the ord- 
inance was repealed, and the government dis- 
solved, what Governor was there to report any- 
thing? What was he Governor of? If the ord- 
inance was repealed, and this law did not reenact 
it, by what law was the Northwest Territory 
governed, until the establishment of Ohio as a 
State on the 30th of April, 1302, for there was 
no other law? This modern executive opinion is 
too weak for controversy. The very preamble 
of this law states the ordinance to be continuing 



to have effect; and the object of the law was 
that it might continue to have full effect. Sir, 
Washington and the first Congress of the Con- 
stitution believed that it was a constitutional right 
and duty to expel slavery from the Territories, 
and maintain it so forever. This is what repub- 
licanism claims. Washington baptized our creed, 
and made it national. The gentleman from 
Georgia can see something practical in this, 
and will not attempt to wrestle with this high 
authority. 

Ohio being about to be admitted into the Union, 
Congress, on the 7th of May, 1800, erected Indi- 
ana Territory. It provided for it "a territorial 
government, 'mail respects similar to that provided 
by the ordinance of Congress, passed on the 13th 
of July, 1787, for the government of the terri- 
tory of the United States northwest of the river 
Ohio." Thus Congress again asserted its power 
to legislate to every extent on this vexed question 
for her Territories. President Adams approved 
the act, and Jefferson executed it. 

It was in April, 1802, that Congress passed an 
act authorizing the people of Ohio to form a State 
constitution. The convention met at Chillicothe 
in November. Governor St. Clair addressed it. 
Here squatter sovereignty began, and first lifted 
up its head. What became of the head will^be 
seen in the sequel. Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dick- 
inson may end their rivalry for this patent. Gov- 
ernor St. Clair was the inventor and discoverer, 
and the time for it to be of profit to any one is 
run out. He then said: 

" The people of the Territory require no act of Congress 
to authorize them to call a convention and form a constitu- 
tion, and the act of Congress is "a nullity. For all internal 
affairs we have a complete Legislature of our own, and in 
them we are no more bound by an act of Congress than we 
would be bound by an edict of the First Consul of France. 
The five thousand persons that were let off to the Indiana 
Territory have been divested of their rights. We have the 
means in our hands to bring Congress to reason, if we should 
be forced to use them." 

In consequence of being ignorant of what is 
known to Mr. Pierce, and every one who takes 
political communion with him, to be the sove- 
reign rights of the people of the Territories, Mr. 
Jefferson simply crossed his legs, as he was in 
the habit of doing when he took a decided reso- 
lution, and directed Mr. Madison, his Secretary 
of State, to write the following letter: 

" Sir : The President, observing in an address lately de- 
livered by you to the convention held at Chillicothe, an in- 
temperance and indecorum of language towards the Legis- 
lature of the United States, and a disorganizing spirit and 
tendency of very evil example, and grossly violating the 
rules of conduct enjoined by your public station, determines 
that your commission of Governor of the Northwestern 
Territory shall cease on the receipt of this letter. 

" I am, &e., JAMES MADISON. 

" Arthur St. Clair, Esq., Clrillicothc." 

The putting the Federal head of Arthur St. 
Clair in a charger — the Federal head out of which 
squatter sovereignty was born, and where it died 
— was a piece of somewhat practical conduct in 
Madison and Jefferson. 

Illinois Territory was created by act of Con- 
gress, February 3, 1809. The fourth section 
applied to it the ordinance of 1787. This was 
approved by Madison. The same had been done 



12 



for Michigan by the act of January 11, 1805, 
approved by Jefferson. The same was after- 
wards done for Wisconsin by the twelfth section | 
of the act of April 20, 1836, approved by Jack- 
son. 

But Jefferson and Madison at that time carried 
the doctrine of the power of the Constitution over ; 
the subject of slavery in the new States that had 
been formed out of the public domain, to a 
greater extent than is now generally maintained. 
Jefferson approved the act of Congress author- 
izing Ohio to form a State constitution; Madison 
the act of April 19, 1816, conferring the same 
power on the people of Indiana; but both these 
acts forbade them from adopting constitutions 
repugnant to the ordinance of 1787. They were 
forbidden from incorporating slavery, even when 
clothed with the full dignity and authority of 
States. 

I have here passed by an extraordinary example 
of the assertion of this power by Congress, and 
now return to take it up. The first population of 
Indiana Territory was drawn to it by the Ohio 
river, and principally from the neighboring States 
of Virginia and Kentucky. Their characteristic 
institution was excluded by the ordinance of 1787, 
and having then, in the infancy of constitutional 
construction, no notion of their absolute rights 
to do what they pleased, and especially on that 
subject, applied to Congress for its suspension. 
A territorial convention of elected delegates as- 
sembled at Vincennes, and v/as presided over by 
General Harrison, the Father of the Northwest. 
It will be seen that it differs from the opinion of 
President Pierce, as to the ordinance of 1787 
being then repealed. The petition to Congress then 
agreed upon, now time-worn and dilapidated, I 
have obtained from its slumbers in the Archives 
in this Capitol, and, though somewhat lengthy, 
incorporate here: 

The memorial and petition of the inhabitants of the In- 
diana Territory respectfully sheweth : 

That nine tenths of your memorialists, being of opinion 
that the sixth article of compact contained in the, ordinance 
for the government of the Territory, has been extremely 
prejudicial to their interest and welfare, requested the Gov- 
ernor, by petitions from each of the several counties, to 
call a general convention of the Territory, for the purpose 
of taking the sense of the whole people, by their Repre- 
sentatives, on a subject to them so interesting, and of 
afterwards taking such measures as to them might seem 
meet, by petition to your honorable bodies, not only for 
obtaining the repeal or suspension of the said article of 
compact, hut also for that of representing and petitioning 
for the passage of such other laws as would, in the opinion 
of the convention, he conducive to the general welfare, 
population, and happiness of this distant and unrepresented 
portion of the United States. 

This convention is now sitting at Vincennes, .and have 
agreed to males the following representation to the Con 
pre.-., of the United States, not in the le:i>t doubtingbut 
that everything they can desire, (not prejudicial to the Con- 
stitution or the interest of the General Government,) will 
readily be granted them. 

The sixth article of compact betw ien the United States 
and the people of the Territory, which declares there shall 
in: neithi i slavery nor involuntary servitude in it. has pre 
vented the country from populating, and been the reason of 
driving manj valuable citizens, posses ing -laves, to the 
Spanish aid of the Mississippi, most ofwhom, but for the 

prohibitioi mined in tie ordinance, would have; settled 

in thi and the consequences of keeping that 

prohibition in force will he that of obliging the numerous 

of citizens dil posed to emigrate to see!; an asylum m 



that country where they can be permitted to enjoy toeii 
property. 

Four memorialists, however, and the people they repre- 
sent, do not wish for a repeal of this article entirely, but 
that it may he suspended for the term of ten years, and 
then to be again in force ; but that the slaves brought into 
the Territory during the continuance of this supension, arid 
their progeny, may be considered and continued in the 
same state of servitude as if they had remained in those 
parts of the United States where slavery is permitted, and 
from whence they may have been removed. 

Several persons (as your memorialists are informed) 
having settled on the public lands in this Territory, with 
the intention of purchasing the same when offered for sale 
by the United States, are fearful that advantage may be 
taken of their improvements to enhance the price: your 
petitioners therefore pray that a law maybe passed for their 
relief, giving the right of preemption to all those who may 
have so settled on the puldie lands; and also, as one of the 
more sure means as well of populating the country as of 
enhancing the value of the United States lands remaining 
undisposed of in the Territory, they further pray that pro- 
visions may be made in the said law for securing a certain 
part of every section of such public land to those who will 
actually settle on and cultivate the same. 

The "United States having pledged themselves, in the 
ordinance, that schools and the means of education should 
be forever encouraged, and having, in all the sales of land 
heretofore made, reserved considerable portions thereof for 
that purpose, your memorialists therefore humbly pray that 
a law may be passed making a grant of lauds for the sup- 
port of schools ami seminaries of learning to the several 
settlements of the Territory, to wit : the two settlements on 
the Illinois, the settlement of Vincennes, and that of 
Clark : s grant, near the rapids of the Ohio. 

Your memorialists further show, that they view that part 
of the ordinance for the government of the Territory which 
requires a freehold qualification in fifty acres of laud, a~ 
elector for members to the General Assembly, as subver- 
sive of the liberties of the citizens, and tending to throw- 
too great weight in the scale of wealth. They, therefore, 
pray that the right of suffrage (in voting for representatives 
to the General Assembly) may be extended to the fret 
male inhabitants of the Territory, of the age of twenty- 
one years and upwards, but under su<-ii regulations and 
restrictions as to you, in your wisdom, may seem proper. 

Since the erection of "the Territory into a separate gov- 
ernment, the attorney peneral thereof has prosecuted not 
only for offenses committed against the municipal laws of 
the Territory, but also against the laws of the United States, 
and has been obliged at three different time- to travel one 
hundred aiel sixtj miles from his home, the seat of the 
territorial government, to prosecute offenders against those 
laws, and vet he has received no compensation for his ser- 
vices, either from the United States or the Territory, nor 
is it probable that the Territory can afford to allow him any 
salary for any of his future services. 

Yo'ur memorialists, therefore, pray that a law may be 
passed allowing a salary to the attorney general of the Ter- 
ritory, adequate to the important services which are ren- 
dered by that officer to the United States as well as to the 
Territory. 

Four memorialists are well aware that the consideration 
of the numerous objects contemplated by this memorial 
will require more time than can well be spared from the 
important and general concerns of the Union, but when 
they reflect upon theii neglected and orphan like situation, 
they are emboldened to hope that their wants and wishes 
will meet with all the indulgence and attention ni cessary 
to secure to them the relief which is so essential to their 
welfare and happiness. 

Done at Vineennes, in the Indiana Territory, the 28tl 
day of Pecember, in the year of our Lord J^0\>, and of the 
Independence of the United States, the twenty-seventh. 

By order of the convention : 

WILLIAM I1KNKV BARRISON, 
President, and Delegate from the county of Knox. 
Test: John Kice Jones, Secretary. 

What a picture <>f the past so recenl as to be 
in the memory of living in. in! A citizi <i of that 
State may well feel emotions of jusl pride at its 
benevolence and wisdom, hi- bythe 

firm and honest hand of President Harrison. I: 



13 



is dated in the twenty-seventh year of indepen- 
dence, of which, even on the frontier, its people 
had a share. It acknowledged its dependence on 
the authority of Congress. It foreshadows the 
beneficial law of preemption. It foreshadows to 
the settler the homestead bill, and his own inalien- 
able home on the public lands. It testifies of the 
value of knowledge and virtue, and of schools 
and seminaries for their diffusion. But all that 
broad domain, now occupied by six millions of 
people, filled with cities, villages, and fair fields, 
fruitfulas Egypt, abounding in virtue, patriotism, 
and knowledge, bound together to each other and 
to the other States by bands of iron, and moving 
annually a commerce of seven hundred millions 
of dollars, and yet pursuing its career, foremost 
in the race, was then too poor to pay a lawyer. 

Congress listened to this respectful language of 
petition, and created a committee of singular merit 
to consider it. The report of the committee, con- 
curred in by Congress, was made by John Ran- 
dolph, Jr., of Virginia. . 

"That the rapid population of the State of Ohio sufficiently 
evince?, in the opinion of your committee, that the labor of 
slave? is not necessary to promote the growth and settle- 
ment of colonies in that region. That this labor, demon- 
strably the dearest of any, can only be employed to advan- 
tage in the cultivation of products more valuable than any 
known to that quarter of tbe United States. That the com- 
mittee deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair 
a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and 
prosperity of the- north-western country, and to give strength 
and security to that extensive frontier. In the salutary 
operation of this sagacious' and benevolent restraint, it is 
believed that the inhabitants of Indiana will, at no very dis- 
tant day, rind ample remuneration for a temporary privation 
of labor and emigration." 

Thus, in the language of the gentleman from 
Georgia, the fathers of the Republic did exercise 
" the power of excluding the migration of slaves 
from the States to the common Territory." 

It has often been said, that the grant from Vir- 
ginia required the exclusion of slavery in that 
Territory. This is an error. The grant was 
unreservedly of " all right, title and claim, as well 
of soil as jurisdiction?'' and was wholly unfettered 
by any condition on the subject. 

Indiana Territory then comprised all of the 
present states of Indiana* Illinois, Michigan, and 
Wisconsin. Illinois and Wisconsin then formed 
two counties of the Territory, St. Clair and Ran- 
dolph, with an official population in 1801 of four 
thousand three hundred and eleven, principally 
at Prairie du Chien, also, on the Illinois, and 
at Cahokia and Kaskaskia, descendants of the ; 
French explorers of the valley of the Mississippi, 
commencing with La Salle. 

The infant people of Illinois then met in dele- 
gated convention. The convention occurred on 
the 25th of November, 1805. It was presided 
over by the venerable John Edgar. In the peti- 
tion then adopted, which is now moldering in 
your archives, they describe themselves " as the 
people of the Illinois," they ask for "the erec- 
tion ofacolonial government on the Mississippi;" 
they allude to the struggle by which they them- 
selves conquered the northwest territory into the 
Union; they say that the expense of such agov- 
ernment is trifling to so great a nation as this, 
and that by its weight it would " control and 



dissipate those hordes of restless adventurers, 
who, by penetrating into the illimitable regions of 
the West, might defy the national arm and com- 
mit the national peace." Among other things, 
they adopted the following resolution, making 
their own italies. Even they had not discovered 
that the ordinance of 1787 was repealed: 

" And whereas the ordinance of 1787, for the government 
of this Territory, is respected by the people as the Censtitu- 
tion of their country, this committee entertain a hope that 
the General Government, after guarantying to the public 
the privileges in that ordinance contained, will not pass 
unnoticed the violation thereof, by tbe late act of the Legis- 
lature of this Territory, authorizing the importation of slaves, 
and involuntary servitude for a long term of years. 

" And although this committee entertain no doubt but 
that the act in question will render service by adding a 
spring to the growth of this country, they express the dis- 
approbation of a people who never will consent to a viola- 
tion of that ordinance for this privilege of slavery. When 
Congress shall deem a change of the ordinance expedient, 
they will cheerfully agree to the measure." 

Such was squatter sovereignty in Illinois before 
the cradle of Senator Douglas was rocked. 

For the vindication of the honored history of 
Indiana and Illinois, I turn again with regret to 
the present Executive of Virginia, and the extrav- 
agant language of a special message of January 
•3\>d last, in which he refers to Virginia and her 
former sovereignty of the Northwest: 

" She was then sovereign of an eminent domain, ample 
enough to pay officers and man to fight the armies of kings. 
To cement the union of the States— to harmonize and 
strengthen their confederacy — she afterwards ceded, with 
more than generous devotion, the whole of her northwest 
territory to the General Government, reserving only what 
was called the Virginia military land district, between the 
Miami and Sciota rivers, in the State of Ohio. The last 
power on earth to question the substanc i or form of her 
pledges is the General Government, to which she has been 
so generous." 

Without any motive to disparage the honor and 
patriotism of that illustrious old Commonwealth, 
I hold that Virginia had no property or right 
there, except in the reserve alluded to , and another, 
(Clark's grant,) omitted inadvertently, and this 
only by the permission and silence of Congress. 

The facts are few. In 1609 King James created 
the Virginia company, with license to settle a 
colony in America between 34° and 45° of north 
latitude, extended west to the ocean. He after- 
wards gave two or three other charters, extending 
the privileges of the same company. In 1624 the 
validity of these charters was brought into law, 
and judicially denied. The Virginia company 
was dissolved. In 1625, after the invalidity of 
the previous charters had been decreed, Charles 
I. made proclamation of the fact, and declared 
Virginia to depend on himself for government. 
It was afterwards governed by royal commission. 
The lands were disposed of by the Crown. 
Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Geor- 
gia, were, by the same kingly authority, erected 
out of its limits. Conflicting grants within the 
same parallels of latitude were made to New 
York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The 
western boundary of Virginia was fixed by the 
King in council at the Alleghanies. 

For one hundred and fifty years Virginia was 
silent. But, in 1776, it claimed the rights of the 
charter of 1609. Maryland resisted this extraor- 



14 



dinary assumption ; North Carolina also resisted. 
Other States claimed the same territory, and for 
better reasons. Virginia carried it with a high 
hand, and opened aland office. Congress remon- 
strated. Settlers, under the authority of Virginia, 
went across the Ohio. Congress had them ar- 
rested and expelled. Virginia remonstrated. But 
Congress, l>y resolution, April 17, 1780, ordered 
that their officers should be supported in the act. 

The question of title to the Northwest was 
then referred to a committee of Congress. It 
reported November 3, 1781, and decided, that 
by the public acts of the other States, the title 
was in New York. Virginia then wanted a Fed- 
eral guarantee to the territory southeast of the 
Ohio. The committee refused it on the ground 
" that large tracts west of the mountains had 
been sold by the King before the Revolution, and 
that in the year 1763 a very large part thereof 
was separated and appointed for a distinct gov- 
ernment and colony by the King of Great Brit- 
ain, with the knowledge and approbation of the 
government of Virginia," and that its western 
boundary had been otherwise declared. Con- 
gress not only denied her right to the Northwest, 
but to the country, also, on the southeast side of 
the Ohio. 

Such was the title of Virginia to the North- 
west, based on a charter, judicially condemned, 
the condemnation silently agreed to for one hun- 
dred and fifty years, pretentiously revived during 
the Revolution as a bone of contention, denied by 
the Congress of the Revolution, and her title at 
length received, not because it conveyed any 
right, but because it settled a pertinacious claim, 
and on the severe condition of leaving to Virginia 
all of Kentucky, the Miami grant and Clark's 
grant. 

The true glory of acquiring the Northwest Ter- 
ritory to the Union, much better than an exploded 
paper title, with the silent dust of one hundred 
and fifty years on it, belongs to the conquerors 
of the British post of St. Vincent, on the Wabash, ! 
February 24, 1779. That post was, except De- I 
troit, the only British garrison between the lakes [ 
and the gulf, and, strong itself, was more alarm- 
ing because it sent forth the savage incursions [ 
that so often made the western frontier red with 
the blood of its people, and lit up the midnight ! 
with the flames of their dwellings. Vincennes 
was won by a force composed principally of the ; 
colonists of Indiana and Illinois — of Kaskaskia 
and the French settlements on the Wabash; 
making a winter march in order to surprise it, 
wading miles of freezing rivers, and exhausted 
by ft ; hunger. And, although ardent 

Virginians, recruited into Clark's regiment after 
its return to the south side oftheOhio, and after 
the victory was won, and no service of danger 

was to bed !, managed to engross'the principal 

part of the liberal gift of our hundred and fifty 
thousand acres of land for this distinguished 
service, let the hdnest fame of the conquest rest 
where it belongs. I have referred briefly to these 
facts, because, not content with the profits of the 
assertion of this unparalleled claim, Virginia now 
maintains a historic title to gratitude. 

I have thus referred to the immemorial and 



consistent practice of the Government, under the 
Confederation and under the Constitution, on the 
subject of the government of the Territories, and 
especially in restraint of slavery, up to the pre- 
sent Administration, that is now drawing to its 
end with such universal popularity and satisfac- 
tion. It has been the faith and works of Wash- 
ington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 
Jackson, and Harrison. Republicanism is con- 
tent to wander with such guides. Nor have I 
been able to notice similar restraints and condi- 
tions imposed on the Mississippi Territory, on 
Louisiana, on Minnesota, and Iowa, and I think, 
with equal force on New Mexico and Utah; nor 
have I referred to the uniformity of judicial de- 
cisions, State and Federal, with which this neces- 
sary congressional power has been maintained. 
But the executive, judicial, andlegislative history 
on this subject are parallels. 

In answer to all this, the gentleman from Geor- 
gia refers to Madison's memorandum to Walsh, 
and Jefferson's letter to Holmes. Let it be noticed 
that this reference is made to imply that they 
thought Congress had no power on the subject 
of slavery in the Territories. Let it be noticed, 
too, that the point in dispute in that severe strug- 
gle that preceded the adoption of the Missouri 
compromise, was not of the power of Congress 
over the subject of slavery in the territories, but 
of its power to regulate the subject of slavery for 
a State at the time of its admission into the Union. 
The following extract from the memorandum to 
Mr. Walsh is, then, the refutation: 

'•' The power, however, be its import what it may, is ob- 
viously limited to a Territory while remaining in that char- 
acter, as distinct from that of a State." 

The Holmes letter is a just condemnation of 
freedom entering into bargains and compounding 

j felony with slavery by geographical partitions. 
As applied to the admission of Missouri, then 
applying for admission into the Union, which, 
with the restriction, was the subject of that letter, 
he questions its expediency, but does not deny 
the power, but admits it by speaking of it as an 
"act of power." Jefferson avoided this geo- 
graphical difficulty in tfie act of 1743, by pro- 
posing to exclude slavery from all territory. 

i Following his footsteps, if no better pacific alter- 

! native is offered, we are preferred to escape geo- 

; graphical differences by maintaining this complete 
exclusion now. 

This question is vital to the national peace, 
and prosperity, and honor. Its importance gives 
it a controlling position. It is now to be heard 

i and submitted to the tribunal of the people. Mr. 
Buchanan and Mr. Fremont are r< presentative 
men. The former has been rem 'or the 

convenient variety of his opinions, lie may be 
characterized as holding opinions of accommoda- 

• tion, not so much his bw n and for persona) use, 
as to oblige others. He is always with the dock, 

j but always firings up behind. He dors not lead 
the van, but journeys in the rear with the provis- 
ion wagons. Honored in private life, he allows 
himself to be the idol of a party of great historic 
renown, now recruited and principally composed 
nf its hereditary enemies, debauched from its 
purity and heretical to its faith. H kable 



15 



for his vicissitudes of opinion about the Missouri 
compromise. He at first opposed it, because 
freedom ought, he said, to have all of Louisiana. 
He wrote resolutions, uttered speeches, signed 
memorials. After the Missouri compromise was 
passed, he heartily approved it. From this pe- 
riod, he is commended by the Union for his sub- 
servience to the South. When Texas was to be 
annexed, he saw, with his own eyes, the hand of 
Providence leading Ham's poor, enslaved chil- 
dren across the Rio Grande to deliverance, and 
he filled himself with gladness. When, after- 
wards, the slice had been cut from the Mexican 
loaf, ar.d the Wilmot proviso was offered, he was 
recovered from the disease of freedom to all the 
Territories that afflicted him in 1819. The Wilmot 
proviso was then inexpedient, fanatical, and rev- 
olutionary. He changed his mind once more, 
and it ceased to be insane and improper, and then 
he and Mr. Douglas were for geographical par- 
ties, and pushing the line of 3G°30' to the Pacific. 
At this jubilant period he wrote to the Berks 
county Democracy, who have interpolated on 
their creed the immortality of General Jackson, 
that the Missouri compromise had once saved the 
Union, and would do so again. The Missouri 
compromise was repealed. On account of it he 
could not contain himself for joy, on the eve of 
the Cincinnati convention, and wrote so to Mr. 
Slidell. Bewildered man ! He has turned round 
until his head is dizzy, and now rises, after the 
nomination, before a collection of friends, and 
says, like Rip Van Winkle, out of his long sleep, 
he is not himself, and don't know himself. He 
is as unsettled in political as in domestic life. In 
order to ascertain where he will next make port, 
it is necessary to look at that sailing chart, the 
Cincinnati platform. 

Mr. Pierce's administration is admired by that 
convention, and Mr. Buchanan is to do like him. 
The President has divided his administration 
between weakness and wickedness. I stop, in 
specifying, at one accusation. The President has 
permitted law and order to be trampled under foot 
in Kansas, its franchises violated, its people 
conquered , its villages inflamed , its people hunted , 
robbed, murdered — for the sake of extending 
slavery into a Territory that he thrice said should 
be kept free forever. It has not been a fault of 
ignorance. He has known it, winked at it, en- 
couraged it. The question is, shall a successor 
be chosen to maintain the sovereignty of disorder 
and crime; for such as it has been, Mr. Buch- 
anan has adopted it all. 

Leaving out of consideration altogether the 
investigations of the Kansas committee, the ex- 
ecutive minutes of Governor Reeder, kept at the 
time, and communicated to the President, show 
that Kansas was enslaved and conquered by the 
election of March, 1855. The President had been 
made aware of the armed invasion of November, 

1854, and was warned of its probable repetition 
in March, but his voice and influence were silent. 
Compare the official census of the 3d of March, 

1855, with the number of voters on 'the 27th of 
the same month, as abstracted from the executive 
minutes, and the proof of the invasion and con- 
quest is complote. 



Census of Voters in Kansas, March 3, 1855, and votes -polled 
at the legislative election for Councilmcn and Represent- 
atives in the Territorial Legislature, March 30, 1855: 



4S5 
212 
193 
442 
253 
201 
247 
215 
208 
463 



1,186 
341 
649 
855 
350 
540 
486 
203 
417 

1,206 



[2,905 ;6,333 



confirmed, 
rejected. 



» 


3 




> 














U 


a> 


a: .2 


>> 

.2 


"c 
a. 


i: "^ 



















^ 


> 


> 


1 


369 


1,044 


2 


199 


341 


3 


101 


376 


4 


47 


80 


5 


442 


855 


6 


253 


350 


7 


53 


234 


8 


39 


39 


9 


36 


75 


10 


63 


92 


11 


24 


372 


12 


78 


_ 


13 


96 


242 


14 


334 


727 


15 


308 


417 


16 


385 


964 


17 


50 


62 


18 


28 


62 


2,905 


6,333 



If this result is honest, the population seems 
to have doubled in less than a lunar month, and 
at that inclement season, when, least of all, emi- 
gration takes its way to the unbroken wilderness. 
The distribution of the invading force was such 
as enabled it to conquer every poll but one in the 
Territory. 

If, in spite of these figures, and the accumula- 
tion of proof which establish the contrived and 
effected outrage of the franchises of the citizens 
of Kansas, gentlemen still persist in doubting it, 
I take them for a moment, and for the sake of 
argument, at their word. Let it be granted that 
the election of Kansas was an honest election by 
the "actual, resident inhabitants" of the Terri- 
tory only. The election was an upright, undis- 
turbed, unspotted act of government. The judges, 
unterrified and unexpelled from their places, were 
the serene, official spectators of the great repre- 
sentative act of election, and voters came from 
quiet homes, even on the margin of the wilder- 
ness, to these scenes of peace, and registered their 
creation of their own officers of legislation. Let 
all this be granted. 

But then follows this inevitable conclusion: if 
Kansas has such an honest speed of population 
that, in twenty-seven days, from the 3d of Mareh, 
1855, to the 30th of March, 1855, her voting 
population much more than doubled; and if, in 
her infancy, she has been able to evince such a 
singular decorum and ability in conducting a 
popular election, now, at the end of sixteen 
months, she is wise enough and populous enough 
to be admitted as a State. Jefferson thought 
twenty thousand a sufficient population for the 
purpose. Kansas has much more. Will gentle- 
men who scoff with incredulity at the wrongs of 
Kansas, and believe in the fairness of this elec- 
tion, now take her as she eomes, bringing her 



16 



self-created constitution, and assist in raising her 
to the dignity of a State? 

But I repel this affectation of unbelief. The 
outrage on Kansas is obvious, transparent his- 
tory. It was a comprehensive and eomplex po- 
litical conspiracy, conceived in the most despised 
of sordid passions, detestable in its objects, pro- 
moted by bad men, defiant and rebellious to the 
laws, aggressive on social and political rights, 
made more efficacious by secrecy and conceal- 
ment, and conducted to its consequences by such 
a course of enormities as have not elsewhere 
disgraced the last ages of mankind. Nor, in 
order to maintain this, is it necessary to go in 
search of outside sources of information — to let- 
ter-writers and newspaper information, flippantly 
so called, though these are the materials out of 
which sober history, by its own analysis and 
chemistry, will, in the quiet time to come, derive 
its truth and stigmatize this offense. But the fact 
is made evident by these plain , irrefragable figures , 
not of speech, but of arithmetic, and of official 
exactness, set down in the foregoing tables. 

Let us look at them. The Territory of Kan- 
sas as organized by the Kansas act lies between 
the thirty-seventh and fortieth degrees of lat- 
itude. It stretches west, from the western boun- 
dary of Missouri, through more than thirteen de- 
grees of longitude. To state it approximately, it 
is two hundred miles in breadth, and more than 
eight hundred miles in length. It appears on the 
map like a riband. 

And now I bring the accusation, that these 
unnatural boundaries were established, inconsist- 
ent with the present or future interests or industry 
of its inhabitants, for the purpose of aggrandizing 
the interests of slavery. It does not reach down 
on. the south to the line of thirty-six and a half 
degrees, the old Missouri compromise line, in 
order that sufficient territory might be left south 
of the southern boundary of the Territory to 
establish a slave State. Thus here was " a pas- 
ture fresh and new," sought for and intended, 
deemed certain to become a slave State in the 
maturity of time, and therefore not ordained. 
And on the north it did not reach to the northern 
boundary of Missouri, or further, to its natural 
and proper boundary, the Platte, whereby Kan- 
sas, instead of being, as it is now, only one fourth 
as large as Nebraska, would then have approached 
it nearer in size. This was done in order that 
Kansas, as it was organized, might be made more 
inaccessible to northern population, that it might 
be hid away from them behind the corner of 
Missouri, and that Missouri, largely interested 
in slaveholding, might, along its two hundred 
miles of common boundary, impend its overshad- 
owing influence over it. So the boundaries of 
Kansas were made, nut fir a national good, but 
for a sectional good— in the South, to add the 
influence of a future state to the interest of a sec- 
tion; in the North, and with the same object of 
promo tng t] of that section, to shut 

out all th from its enjoyment. The 

apt condition for criminal enterprises, from the 
shape ai in which the Kansas bill left 

that . '!'■ v to the conspiracy. 

Our d th these official figures. 



The area of Kansas is about one hundred and 
fifty thousand square miles. At the time of the 
census, there was not so much as a voter to every 
fifty square miles of territory; or suppose, which 
is true, that population was confined along the 
principal rivers, and had not yet stretched more 
than one fourth the length of the territory, away 
from the Missouri boundary, there was not yet 
one voter to every twelve square miles. It would 
have been extraordinary if one half the enumer- 
ated voters had been present at the polls. In a 
new country, population is always poor. It 
earns and breaks every day its bread of life. At 
the time of the Kansas election, the season of 
preparation for the summer and autumnal har- 
vests was on them. Living at long intervals, 
new settlers communicate rarely, and do not make 
common sentiment or concert action. In the 
Territories, going to vote was deemed less im- 
portant, from the immemorial experience of the 
considerate benevolence and protection extended 
by Congress over the Territories. 

At the late Delegate election in Nebraska, four 
times larger than Kansas, its machinery of gov- 
ernment put in operation earlier, as much within 
the flow of emigration, and with a navigable river 
for its boundary for a thousand miles, only twelve 
hundred votes were polled. Such is only an or- 
dinary unconcern about elections in new com- 
munities! 

But, on that election day in Kansas, instead of 
fifteen hundred, more than six thousand votes 
were polled. On that day Kansas was conquered 
— conquered by an invading enemy by the appli- 
ances and under the forms of law, that had been 
sanctified here for her happiness, peace, and 
safety; in outrage of the guarantee to leave her 
perfectly free to make and maintain her own laws 
subordinate to nothing but the Constitution; in 
bold defiance of the national authority, and in 
subversion of the social and political rights, not 
j of themselves only, but of all of us. To the 
! national shame, that conquest has been permitted 
j to endure. And we hesitate to vindicate the na- 
tional authority that has been insulted, and remain 
. deaf to the cries of distress from the youngest 
child born to us out of the public domain by the 
creative vigor of our laws. 

At the first exercise, then, of the great act of 
- sovereignty by a popular election in the Terri- 
tory of Kansas, in the whole bounds of which 
there were only 2,905 voters, there was the aston- 
ishing result of 6,333 votes. A majority of those 
who conducted that election were strangers to the 
inhabitants and to the soil of Kansas. This is 
your public official history. Even on the sup- 
position, that every registered citizen shared in 
that election, the invaders, numerically greater, 
beoame the illegitimate masters of the franchises 
of Kansas. The true people of the Territory 
were crushed out by those who were not within 
the privileges and qualifications of the organic 
act. 

The invasion was only the ripening of a pre- 
viously formed conspiracy. Here the offense 
rises to the turpitude of crime. It was a con- 
spiracy, because such masses of men could not, 
otherwise, have been precipitated together on the 



17 



Territory, without preconcert, and without a 
common object. It was a secret conspiracy, or, 
otherwise, some curious ear or some omnipresent ] 
Argus of the press would have caught a knowledge 
of it, and the world been told the processes by j 
which a great crime is born. It was a conspiracy i 
to conquer the franchises of Kansas, and trample J 
its independence under foot, because its whole j 
weight was directed on the election, as the mis- 1 
sile is thrown at a mark. It had no other object, ' 
because it sought no other object. It compre- j 
hended its criminal numbers over a large terri- 
tory, because such numbers could not have been j 
recruited and mustered in a limited territory. \ 
Its appointments were made with a happy saga- ' 
city of criminal machinery. Its execution was j 
wide-spread and far reaching, for with hands 
multiplied as Briareus's, it seized by violence, at 
the same moment, every ballot-box but one, of 
the whole Territory. It was a conspiracy, not ] 
only to subordinate the law to violence, but to 
disfranchise a whole people from the protection 
of the laws. It was not merely a political dis- 1 
order, but a great political crime. Its whole j 
muster-roll was made up in the South. 

Nor is it necessary to characterize the quality 
of such conquerors, when conduct and character 
have such steady consistency with each other. 
Society, in its own modes of purification, is all 
the time sloughing away its prurient and sickly 
members, who, after being trained in the schools 
that lie on the road to the penitentiary and the : 
gallows, for a short season cheat their manifest 
destiny, and unite in criminal enterprises like this, 
in morals as ragged and tatterdemalion as the 
memorable regiment that dogged at Falstaff's 
back through Coventry. The whisky barrel, 
that new munition of modern arms, that obtrudes 
itself as the center figure throughout this whole 
epic, and at whose dear sides these swaggering 
heroes strode, is the tell-tale of the moral dignity 
of these conquerors of Kansas. And this con- 
spiracy, concerted, clandestine, comprehensive, 
gigantic in dimensions and organized with the 
exactness, and conducted in the fashion and with 
the accompaniments, of military enterprise, was 
meant to undo your own work, to destroy the 
popular sovereignty lately ordained for Kansas 
under such specious and ostentatious words as 
implied that you conferred novel and extraordi- 
nary powers on the people of that Territory. 
The invasion was a treasonable act, but no ex- 
ecutive step has been taken to punish the offend- 
ers. 

The last Congress, with the arrogance that 
belongs to mediocrity when suddenly raised to 
authority, exalted itself above the steady and 
consistently wise government of the Territories, 
that had prevailed for three-score years and ten, 
and of which the Missouri compromise was a 
part, and repealed that measure. By similar 
legislation under Washington, Jefferson, Madi- 
son, and Jackson, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Mich- 
igan, and Wisconsin, had come out of the wilder- 
ness and entered the family of States, at once 
full of happiness and riches, and ripe in freedom 
and knowledge. The Missouri restriction of 
1820 created a new northwest on the "sunset 



side of the Mississippi," and was working out 
its end. The Kansas and Nebraska bill repealed 
it. It was done without any one asking for it. 
It said in argument, " the people of the Territo- 
ries have been permitted to make their own laws, 
except on one subject — slavery. The Missouri 
compromise is a congressional restraint on that 
power. For the people's sake, and for their 
larger liberty," it said " it shall be removed." 
It was done amid universal execration and dis- 
may. " Now," it said, " the people of Kansas 
can determine the question for themselves." 
These words were a delusion. The South was 
caught in no such stupidity. It claimed , as soon as 
the law was passed, that slavery might lawfully 
enter the Territories, and before any Territorial 
Legislature existed in Kansas, Governor Reeder 
made return in his census report of one hundred 
and ninety-two slaves there. The President 
knew of it, and thus first acquiesced in the ex- 
traordinary construction, that the people of the 
Territory have no power over the subject of sla- 
very. And now every Administration member 
of this body, who has expressed himself on the 
subject, holds that the people of the Territory 
have no right to exclude slavery. 

When Senator Trumbull asked Senator Doug- 
las, some time ago, in the Senate, if he believed 
in the power of the people of Kansas, under the 
Kansas bill, to prohibit slavery, he answered, it 
was a delicate judicial question he should not try 
to answer. It was a judicial question under the 
Missouri compromise. Senator Douglas had 
maintained in the celebrated report accompany- 
ing the Kansas bill — if the object was to get a 
judicial question merely, why not leave the Mis- 
souri compromise in force ? Or, if the Kansas 
bill gives no power on that subject, why not say 
it raises a judicial question, instead of that it gives 
the people sovereignty over the subject of slavery ? 
And if it does not give the people sovereignty on 
this question, what popular sovereignty do they 
enjoy, that they have not had under every terri- 
torial law since 1787? And if it does give the 
power, because slavery is a domestic institution, 
does it also give to Utah the right of multiplying 
wives by statutes? But this cry is now at an 
end. The very authors of this measure, who say 
the Kansas Legislature is a legal one, have lately 
passed a bill repealing a portion of their laws, 
and now show that they have abandoned their 
dogma. Even the gentleman from Georgia, [Mr. 
Stephens,] in the able argument to which I have 
already referred, in which he contends for the 
sovereignty of the people of Kansas, and the reg- 
ularity of its Legislature, was at that very mo- 
ment, in fact, denying both, by tendering to this 
House a bill to repeal part of its laws. The gen- 
tleman from Georgia avowed a regard for the 
sovereignty of Kansas, made manifest in her 
laws, while holding in hand, at the same mo- 
ment, a proposition to repeal them, as if he him- 
self believed in the power. 

So, the conspiracy against Kansas was only a 
sequel of that legislation, and both were meant 
to extend slavery. And therefore it was, at its 
fatal conception, the North heaved tumultuous- 
ly, as if an earthquake underlaid it — because it 



18 



entered the sanctuary of an old compact and pro- 
faned it — because it made slavery possible where 
it had been outlawed since 1800, and, in the midst 
of a century of Christianity and knowledge, in- 
augurating human slavery as the controlling influ- 
ence in politics, threatened to jostle hostile inter- 
ests against each other, and sow dragon's teeth, to 
spring up full-armed passions; over a virgin ter- 
ritory, hardly less in measure than the Roman 
Empire when it was swayed by the first Cmsars. 

To make it palatable, the words, pleasant then, 
but bitter now, "popular sovereignty," were 
used. But it was necessary further to use ambig- 
uous words, instead of plain ones, to make it 
bear favorable, though different constructions, at 
both ends of the Union. Then the Kansas bill 
spoke with a tongue forked like a serpent's. It 
paltered to the public in a double sense. It said 
to the North, "This is your victory, for by your 
superiority of numbers and energy of colonization 
you can now make your places of observation, 
and build your fortresses of freedom around the 
whole South, and wall it in, and keep it in a state 
of siege till slavery dies." It said to the South, 
" By the equality of the States, slavery now lives 
again, and may overstep the boundary of the 
States and enter the Territories, and fence in the 
North, and stop its thrift." The very opposite 
hopes it encouraged, created sections, and kin- 
dled the passions that have stained Kansas with 
blood. 

That is the eminent merit of the Cincinnati 
platform, now. It reads two ways — to the South, 
that slavery may enter all the public Territories 
unopposed; to the North, that the people in the 
Territory may exclude it, but dares not say either 
of these things in a straightforward way, and is 
silent on the subject the people are most concerned 
to know. 

In the midst of blunders of history, constitu- 
tional criticism, and much wounded vanity ill- 
concealed, the President, in his late messages, 
embraces one truth — that the land is agitated with 
this subject. He had said the peace with which 
his reign began should endure — to gain it credit, 
he said it three times, in accepting the nomination 
in 1852, in his inaugural message, and in his first 
message, and then acted so as to show that none 
of his promises, thrice told, were worth anything. 
Sir, the President and the authors of the Ne- 
braska bill are the agitators. I know no other 
agitators. The cart -tail speech of Mr. Atchison 
in Missouri, showing the coercion by which he 
obtained the passage of that measure for the sake 
of slavery, is full of verity. The President hesi- 
tated at first. He stood shivering and fainting 
at the brink, and did not plunge in, but allowed 
himself to be drawn in — to be shoved in. Others 
were pushed in, and then others, too poor to have 
opinions of their own, or calculating the value of 
the Nebraska bill in its advantage to themselves, 
followed obsequiously after. 

The invasions of Kansas were only overt and 
violent acts of the conspiracy, but were not the 
beginning. It began in the attempt to repeal the 
> Missouri compromise. It began here. Like the 
conspiracy of Catiline, it was hatched in sight of 
the Cap it i.!. 



The President, on the passage of the bill, was 
already pledged to the work. Slavery had then 
an ally with extraordinary powers of mischief. 
He appointed the Governor, who was only the 
President's machine, and held his office by the 
tenure of complete obedience. The judges were 
appointed, and amenable in the same manner. 
They were even worse, for, unlike the Governor, 
they had determined not to give up their con- 
sciences. The marshal of the Territory was the 
President's marshal. You called this popular sov- 
ereignty. Here the President held in his hand 
two of the most important branches of the terri- 
torial government. There was but one more, the 
Legislature, to master. 

Mr. Atchison, by accident of position the Vice 
President, relinquished his place in the Senate 
Chamber, and hastened back to Missouri to pro- 
vide for getting control of the Legislature. The 
Blue Lodsre grew up under his ingenious and cun- 
ning handiwork. It was a secret society, rami- 
fied, according to the proof before the investigat- 
ing committee, through all the southern States, 
oath-bound , and devoted to the spread of slavery, 
and especially into Kansas. It pledged its mem- 
bers to go there, when commanded, for the pur- 
pose of voting at elections, and levied contributions 
to provide means for subverting, by organized 
force, the Federal laws, and destroying all civil 
rights in Kansas. So this force was gathered 
together, combined under pledges of mutual sup- 
port, secretly inducted and initiated, that the 
criminal purpose might be hid, to impose, by 
violent and criminal means, a government and 
institutions to which they were averse, on the 
people of a neighboring Territory. The one 
thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine that 
marched out of Missouri into Kansas in Novem- 
ber, 1854, and the four thousand nine hundred 
and eight that, in array, and with the accom- 
paniments of active war, again entered Kansas 
in March, 1855, and on these two occasions gave 
so many illegal votes, and excluded the citizens 
of Kansas from the privilege of election, which 
was the only power of government given them 
by the organic act — all this organized militia of 
slavery is within the criminal punishment of the 
laws he has sworn to maintain, and yet the Pres- 
ident has been silent. 

The spirit of this aggression need not be told. 
Warned before the second election of the coming 
invasion, of which he in turn apprised the Pres- 
ident, and with a manly purpose of protecting 
his people, Governor Reeder had a thought of 
interposing force against this outrage. But the 
Squatter Sovereign in turn warned him of the dan- 
ger of maintaining the faithful execution of the 
laws: 

"A military force to protect the ballot box! Let Pres- 
ident Pierce, or Governor Reeder, <>r any other power, 
attempt such a coarse in this, or any other portion of the 
Union, ami that day will never be forgotten." 

On the night before the invasion, and while the 
enemies of Kansas were accumulated in Mis- 
souri, on its frontier, ready to advance on its bal- 
lot-boxes, t reneral Stringfellow, whose word was 
oracular, met them, and gave them, in this lan- 
guage, his counsel and benediction: 



19 



"To those who have qualms of conscience as to violat- 
ing laws, State or National, the time has come when such 
impositions must be disregarded, as your rights and prop- 
erty are in danger ; and I advise you, one and all, to enter 
every election district in Kansas, in defiance of Reeder and 
his vile myrmidons, and vote at the point of the bowie- 
knife and revolver. Neither give nor take quarter, as our 
case demands it. It is enough that the slaveholding inter- 
est wills it, from which there is no appeal. What right has 
Governor Reeder to rule Missourians in Kansas? His 
proclamation and prescribed oath must be repudiated. It 
is your interest to'do so. Mind that slavery is established 
where it is not prohibited." 

I avoid alluding to the details of that day of 
guilt, read with shame and indignation over the 
whole land, and to endure in sight of the whole 
earth as an ineradicable blot on the national 
honor. The invaders went back to Missouri on 
the next day, and there published in the Squatter 
Sovereign, a newspaper patronized by the Admin- 
istration, their bulletin of victory, dated Inde- 
pendence, Missouri, March 31, 1855. It says: 

•' Several hundred emigrants from Kansas have just en- 
tered our city. They were preceded by the Westport and 
Independence brass bands. They came in at the west side 
of the public square, and proceeded entirely around it, the 
bands cheering us with fine music, and the emigrants with 
good news. Immediately following the bands were about 
two hundred horsemen in regular order; following these 
were one hundred and fifty wagons, carriages, &c. They 
gave repeated cheers for Kansas and Missouri. They report 
that not an anti-slavery man will be in the Legislature of 
Kansas. We have made a clean sweep." 

Westport and Independence are in ecstacy ! 
We of Missouri have made a clean sweep of the 
Legislature of Kansas ! Is this the entertainment 
to which the people of the Territories were in- 
vited ? 

Lecompte encouraged. Jones, then the Presi- 
dent's postmaster at Weston, now sheriff of 
Douglas county, was holding a pistol at the breast 
of an officer of the law of the United States, com- 
pelling him to relinquish his office in five minutes 
or die. The President has dishonored the proud 
soldiery of the Republic, by compelling them, as 
a posse, into obedience to such a ruffian. Atchi- 
son was tempted away from Missouri to witness 
this violation of the law he assisted to make, and 
announces the result in his cart-tail speech, with 
the swagger of a Gascon, and the vulgar ferocity 
of a pirate. He had advised the first inroad in 
November, 1854: 

" T saw it with my own eyes. These men came with 
the avowed purpose of driving or expelling you from the 
Territory. What did I advise you to do ? Why, meet them 
at their own game. When the first election came off, [ 
told you to go over and vote. You did so, and l>eat them. 
We, our party in Kansas, nominated General Whitfield. 

" Well, what next? Why, an election for members of 
the Legislature, to organize the Territory, must be held. 
What did 1 advise you to do then? Why, meet them on 
their own ground, and beat them at their own game again ; 
and, cold and inclement as the weather was, I went over 
with a company of men. 

" My object in going was not to vote, but to settle a diffi- 
culty between two of our candidates; and Abolitionists of 
the North said, and published it abroad, that Atchison was 
there with howie -knife and revolver, and by God 'twas 
true. I never did go into that Territory — I never intend to 
go into that Territory — without being prepared for all such 
kind of cattle. Well, we beat them ; and Governor Reeder 

?ave certificates to a majority of all the members of both 
louses ; and then, after they were organized, as everybody 
will admit, they were the only competent persons to say 
who were and who were not members of the same." 



In a circular to the South, last autumn, Mr. 
Atchison adds that Missouri alone had spent 
$100,000 in carrying on the strife. And yet while 
the judge of his own creation, and whose official 
existence depended on him, the postmaster of 
another State, and the late Vice President, were 
trampling on the laws, and with arms in their 
hands were treasonably defying the national 
authority in Kansas, the President's authority 
and influence slept soundly as a dog in a kennel. 
The Executive, who threw wide open the doors 
of the Treasury, and sent the armed force of the 
sea and land to take back a fugitive from slavery 
— exhausted himself in that spasmodic energy, 
and had no power to exert to save a whole land 
of freemen. Was the President in darkness ? 
This terrible knowledge filled the whole land. 
But, perhaps, he was not officially informed. 
The executive minutes of Kansas were regularly 
and officially laid before him, setting forth the full 
enormity of this public crime. It was, also, re- 
peatedly communicated to him in official letters. 
He was resting on that bed of glory he had spread 
for himself at Grey town. Governor Reeder 
pressed on his consideration the irregularities arid 
disorders of Kansas, and implored his help, and 
he was slightly moved — but it was only in his 
Cabinet. He heartily approved his conduct, but 
required his resignation of office, because "Gen- 
eral Atchison pressed it in the most excited man- 
ner, and would listen to no reasoning at all." 
He then proposed giving him a better office, then 
tempted his integrity by hinting at an improve- 
ment of his private affairs, then turned him out 
of office, and volunteered as his calumniator. 
The President is not safe from opinion, but he is 
now safe from public justice. In the Cincinnati 
convention he had helped to compose, only three 
and a half were finally found who had not made 
up an opinion against him — not enough to make 
ajury. 

These significant illustrations of popular sov- 
ereignty and the equality of the States, together 
with the unparalleled series of disorders that fol- 
lowed, not tolerated merely, but promoted and 
aided by the agents of the Executive, are now 
referred to to freshen recollection of the infirm 
and cowardly conduct lately mapped out at Cin- 
cinnati for future policy, but principally to show 
that, in its accepted and proper sense of collecting 
and expressing the honest will of the people of 
the Territory, no election has been held in Kan- 
sas. The organic act limited the elective franchise 
to " inhabitants who were actual residents." An 
election implies a reflection of the popular will, 
like a form exactly reflected from a mirror. No 
such act of sovereignty has been exercised, be- 
cause it has been prevented by armed conquests, 
and all pretended elections and legislative action 
are simply nullities. This replies at once to the 
imputation of treason and revolutionary conduct, 
modestly hinted in what Mr. Ronton calls the 
ipecac platform, and now affirmed by the gentle- 
man from Georgia, [Mr. Stephens,] because 
treason and revolution can only occur where 
there are existing laws to be opposed. The con- 
spirators against the liberties of Kansas only are 
revolutionary; while those who seek to maintain 



20 



the narrow privileges conveyed by the organic 
act are alone faithful to the supremacy of thelaw. 
The gentleman from Georgia glides by the 
crime by saying that certificates of election were 
given by Governor Reeder. Grant it. But his 
act in giving certificates was clerical, and not ju- 
dicial, and could give no legal quality to an act 
that had none without it. It gave the persons 
who held them no greater strength of right. This 
is maintained by President Pierce in his message 
of January 24th last, in speaking of the election 
of Whitfield as a Delegate in November, 1854, 
who also had a certificate of election from Reeder: 

"Any question," the President says, "appertaining to the 
qualification of the persons voting as people of the Territory, 
would have passed, necessarily and at once, under the 
supervision of Congress, as the judge of the validity of the 
returns of the Delegate." 

Entering on the duties of legislators gave no 
strength to the title of the Legislature. It could 
only have root, and derive validity, from an elec- 
tion held in strict compliance with the organic act. 
What follows the popular act of election at the 
ballot-box, the return, the Governor's certificate, 
&c\, is only an official form, authenticating the 
act of election, but not enlarging it, or altering its 
quality. The true question, in inquiring into the 
verity of an election, is, is its result a fair expo- 
nent of the will of the people entitled to use the 
franchise ? If it is not, the election is a nullity. 
A legitimacy of title in that manner, and from the 
people of the Territory, it never had. 

But Atchison argued at the cart-tail, that Reeder 
having given the certificates, after the persons 
chosen by the invaders were organized into a 
mock Legislature, " everybody would admit they 
were the only competent persons to say who 
were, and who were not, members." If, as he 
says, it was competent for the Legislature to 
decide it, it was not competent for Reeder. But 
the proposition of General Atchison is not gen- 
erally admitted, but denied. The Legislature 
could decide nothing without first having a legal 
title to sit, which is the point in dispute. 

But no cobwebs of forms shall surround and 
sanctify this outrage. Whatever might be the 
condition of a State in such a case of contested 
sovereignty, there is none here. Congress is the 
paramount sovereign of the public. Territories; 
and may not only utterly vacate this irregular 
government, but destroy — if it were absurd enough 
to do so— all functions of government whatever 
throughout all the Territories. If it was com- 
petent for Congress to prescribe elections, it is 
competent to set them aside. To declare, what 
is the fact, the invalidity of the territorial legis- 
lation of Kansas, and reassert and reclaim its 
delegated sovereignty/will at once put a pen, id 
to the outrage and crime now maintained, for 
slavery's sake, at the very heart of our Empire. 
All of that legislation should perish. Nol the 
leas! in, ne rial should remain to remind its people 
hereafter of a foreign servitude. 

In pursuing this argument, the gentleman from 

Georgia ingeniously compared the waste of hu- 

• man ufe in Kansas with thai sometimes produced 

by popular violence in mobs and riots, and made 

a satisfactory set-off. I'm he will here observe 



the difference. Without apology, as all acts of 
popular violence are, these emeutes do not com- 
promise the honor of the State, because it has no 
present force equal to subdue the violence. But 
in Kansas, disorders have occurred on system, 
beginning in November, 1854, furnishing para- 
graphs for almost every newspaper since, com- 
prising the armed police on the Missouri river, 
armed invasions, the ballot-box defiled, speech 
silenced , the press destroyed , imprisoning, trying, 
plundering, robbing, expelling, burning, murder- 
ing — and throughout all, the Executive and his 
officials have silently or actively lent themselves 
to the work. In the one case, the violence is too 
sudden and violent for the law to prevent it. Here, 
where, by a refinement of malice, the outrage is 
slowly distilled and measured, the law is power- 
ful, but the Executive is weak. Here iese dis- 
orders have continued, because the President has 
not wished, because the President had already 
determined not, to prevent them. Here he ac- 
quires his eminence of infamy. 

If this be popular sovereignty, according to the 
principles of the Nebraska-Kansas bill — if, in this 
mode only, the people of the public domain are 
to regulate their domestic institutions in their own 
way, for the national honor we cherish and of 
human nature itself, outraged in this unexampled 
calendar of wrong, let it be ended. If this be not 
popular sovereignty now, when will its fruition 
come ? 

The firm purpose is set. It has been revolved 
in the public mind, and is fixed in the public 
heart, that the large territory sealed to freedom 
by the act for the admission of Missouri in 1820, 
shall remain so forever. This is the nomination 
of our fathers' bond, and the Nebraska act was an 
unfilial judgment on their memories. But recov- 
ered or not, the resolution is not less inflexible. 
This is not aggression, for it pauses at a limita- 
tion the South enforced and the North has ac- 
quiesced in, for more than a third of a century. 
It is only an act of resistance to aggression on 
the covenanted rights of the North. 

A party does not have its nationality in the dif- 
fusion of its members, but in its faith. Mr. Mad- 
ison, the father of the Constitution, obtained the 
exclusion of the word slave from that instrument 
on the ground that when slavery had perished 
out of its existing limits, we should not wish to 
remember that it had ever existed. The whole 
convention agreed to it. Cotemporaneous and 
subsequent history attest that the speedy extinc- 
tion of slavery was then supposed. Getting back 
to that point of departure, we are at the spot of 
true nationality. The "proper Democracy," 
described by Jackson, as distinguished from the 
spurious Democracy that attempted to ingraft on 
our old and honored creed the slavn-y propagand- 
ised of Calhoun, maintained it. For the honor 
of the Democratic party of Indiana, that boasted 
such a chief as Howard, and that perished in de- 
bauch and profligacy at the repeal of the Mis- 
souri compromise, leaving only a name to be 
won, by those who hod abandoned its principles, 
it deserves to be remembered, and my colleague, 
[Mr. English,] and the president of the Senate 
[Mr. Bright,] are the witnesses, that it main- 



21 



tained till 1848 — and then, after a short interreg- 
num of doubt, until 1852 — the doctrine of slavery- 
restriction and freedom to all the Territories. 
That was national then, and, helped by others, 
when they abandon us, we now carry on the 
cause. 

It is the spirit and quality of public liberty to 
be aggressive on everything that is wrong. It 
yields no wrong conditions, asks no auxiliaries, 
but only a fair and open field. " Let truth and 
falsehood grapple," said Milton, full of faith, 
when defending the liberty of the press. " Who 
ever knew truth put to the worse in free and 
open encounter? For who knows not that truth 
is strong, next to the Almighty?" But yet, 
though opposing what the gentleman from Geor- 
gia [Mr. Stephens] has denominated "the prin- 
ciple of a division of the territory," which he 
makes a reason for the repeal of the Missouri 
compromise; to silence this cavil, let us compare 
the territorial gain to the two sections since the 
adoption of the Constitution. The Northwest 
Territory is excluded, because its political condi- 
tion was fixed under the Confederation. So, too, 
for the same reason, Kentucky, Tennessee, and 
the north part of Alabama and Mississippi, are 
excluded. The North has then gained: 

Iowa 50,914 square miles. 

California 155,980 " « 



Total 206,894 



Louisiana, acquired from France, extended on 
the east to the Perdido river, the west boundary 
of Florida. The South has, then, gained and 
organized into States : 

South part of Alabama and Mississippi.... 48,939 sq. miles. 

Louisiana 41,525 " 

Arkansas 52,198 " 

Missouri 67,380 " 

Texas 318,000 " 

Florida 59,268 " 

Total 579,040 " 

The South has acquired twelve Senators while 
the free States have acquired only four. The 
South has acquired twenty-three members in 
the House of Representatives on the basis of 
slaves, for which the North has no equivalent, 
except in good conscience. With less than one 
half of the white population of the North, the 
South has acquired and enjoys twice as much 
territory, and been permitted to muster the con- 
trolling influence of legislation in both branches 
of Congress. But this disparity becomes enor- 
mous, if the Cincinnati dogma, that the Consti- 
tution, by its own vigor, transports slavery into 
the common domain, is to be maintained; for then, 
subject to the struggle for the mastery, one million 
four hundred and seventytwo-thousand and sixty- 
one square miles are to be added to the territorial 
gains of the South, a realm as large as European 
Russia, set apart, under free and equal laws, to 
the perpetuation of human bondage. 

Three fourths of the national revenue, derived 
from customs, is paid by the North. More than 
a moiety of it has been, immemorially, expend- 
ed in the South. Staples of southern produc- 
tion are protected, so as to add millions yearly 



to the riches of her planters. The North pays 
#4,391,860 80 postage; $2,381,607 16 is expended 
in it. The South pays $1,486,984 06 postage. 
The service consumes not this only, but also 
$600,266 05 more derived from the North. This 
is not said in complaint, but to evince how ground- 
less is the clamor of the injustice of the North. 

But the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. 
Orr] admits, in a letter to the Hon. W. C. Dud- 
ley, the kindness of the North, but says it is 
wholly due to northern Democrats: 

" The northern Democrats aided us to bring into the 
Union Texas, a magnificent slaveholding Territory— large 
enough to make four slave States— and strengthened us 
more in that peculiar interest than was ever before done by 
any single act of the Federal Government. Since then, 
they have amended a very imperfect fugitive slave law, 
passed in 1793, and have given us now a law for the recov- 
ery of fugitive slaves, as stringent as the ingenuity of man 
could devise. Since, they have aided us by their votes in 
establishing the doctrine of non-intervention with slavery, 
by Congress, in the Territories. Since then they have actu- 
ally repealed the Missouri restriction, opened the Territo- 
ries to settlement, and enabled us, if the South will be true 
to herself, and aid in peopling Kansas, to form another slave 
State. In 1843 a man would have been pronounced insane, 
had he predicted that slavery would be introduced there by the 
removal of congressional restrictioris." 

To this lame and impotent conclusion to the 
degradation of being only a hireling for the prop- 
agation of slavery on the national domain, they 
tell us that the Democracy of Jefferson and 
Jackson have gone down! In all its forms sla- 
very is an evil. Theologians may maintain its 
divine right and pedigree, and deduce, as they 
do, white and black slavery together, out of its 
oracles, but it remains true that it requires in the 
slave a perpetual crucifixion of the duties of 
Christian life. But, in the sense of political econ- 
omy, and in its social life, so far as connected 
with thateconomy, which is the politician's scope, 
except in money, it is an unmixed evil — to the 
slave, the middle class, the master — paralyzing 
every relation and interest, in which good econ- 
omy (by which is meant the greatest happiness 
of those governed in a State) consists. Its only 
profit is as a mercenary institution, and there it is 
limited to a few. 

History abounds in parallels, and is forever re- 
producing itself. It is nowhere more instructive 
than when, in its numerous examples, it paints 
the weakness and decline that slavery introduces 
into a State, before its final catastrophe — the 
strong contrasts it makes on the canvass, of the 
riches, dissipation, power, and authority, of the 
few, and the vice, degradation, and sufferings, of 
the masses. 

Mr. Bancroft, eminent more as the illustrator 
of our history than as the head of our diplomacy, 
says: 

" In the early periods of Rome, Cincinnatus, at work in 
his field, was the model of patriotism. Agriculture and 
war were the labor and office of freemen. Little farms 
studded the country, and nursed an independent race. 
But, in the time of the Gracchi, the plow was in the hand? 
of the slave. The greater number of freemen were excluded 
from employment by the increase of slavery, and its ten- 
dency to confer the exclusive possession of the soil on the 
few. The palaces of the wealthy towered in the landscape 
in solitary grandeur — the plebeians hid themselves in mis- 
erable hovels. Deprived of all the dignity of freeholders, 
they could not even hope for occupation, for the opulent 
landowner preferred rather to make use of his slaves. 
Tiberius Gracchus saw the inhabitants of the Roman State 



22 



divided into the few wealthy nobles, the many indigent ■ 
citizens, the still more numerous class of slaves. Reason- [ 
tng correctly, he perceived that it was slavery which 
crowded the poor man out of employment, and barred the | 
way to his advancement. In the midst of a land corrupted 
and impoverished by slavery, it was the purpose of Grac- 
chus, by the agrarian law, to create a Roman yeomanry by 
Increasing the number of landed proprietors. It was de- 
signed to create in Italy a yeomanry, instead of slaves, to 
substitute free laborers, to plant liberty, to perpetuate the 
Boman Commonwealth, by identifying its principles with 
the culture of the soil. Graeohus claimed it for the free. I 

"Philanthropy, when it contemplates a slave holding 
country, may have its first sympathies excited for the 
leaves — but it is a narrow benevolence which stops there. 
The needy freeman is in a worse condition. The slave 
has his task, and also his home and his bread. He is the 
member of a wealthy family. The indigent freeman has 
neither labor, nor house, nor food ; and, divided by a broad 
gulf from the upper class, he has neither hope nor ambi- 
tion. He is so abject, that even the slave despises him. 
For the interes't of the slaveholder is diametrically opposite 
to that of the free laborer. The slaveholder is the com- 
petitor of the free laborer, and, by the lease of slaves, takes 
the bread from his mouth. The wealthiest man in Rome 
was the competitor of the poorest carpenter. The patri- 
cians took away the business of the sandal-makers. The 
existence of slavery made the opulent owners of bond- 
men the rivals of the poor ; greedy after the profits of their 
labor, and monopolizing those profits through their slaves. 
In every community where slavery is tolerated, the poor 
freeman Will always be found complaining of hard times. 

" Slavery tends to diminish tire frequency of marriages 
in the class of masters. In a State where emancipation is 
forbidden, the slave population will perpetually gain in 
relative numbers." * * * * "The position is certain 
and universal ; nowhere was it more amply exemplified 
than in Rome." 

But slavery had then, as now, its pimps, and j 
parasites, and hirelings. Even the poor whites 
themselves became silent cowards, as they do 
now, before their rich and powerful oppressors; i 
and the Atchisons and Shannons of Roman sla- 1 
very were permitted to slay the pure and incom- i 
parable tribune of the people, Gracchus, the free- | 
soiler, as he went up the steps of the capitol; and , 
his corpse, like the carcass of a dog, was dragged , 
through the streets and tossed contemptuously 
into the yellow Tiber. 

But vengeance followed the spoliators of the 
poor whites in Italy. Shut out from labor and 
from owning lands, it was necessary to feed them 
from the public granaries. These were to be filled 
by the labor of slaves. Bancroft says: 

" It was a greater burden than the fruits of slavery could 
bear. The deficiency was supplied by the plunder of for- 
eign countries. The Romans, as a nation, became a band 
Of robbers." 

Is this the destiny of our own, the last and best 
of all republics? to linger in weakness from day 
to day with this political canker at its vitals, and 
to perish finally in crime? 

The parallel desolation has begun here, and, if 
uncured, will have the same catastrophe. 

Said Senator Preston, of South Carolina, in 
in 1836: 

"No southern man can journey, as I have done, through 
the northern States, ami witness the prosperity, the industry, 
the public spirit, which they exhibit; the sedulous cultiva- 
tion of those arts by which life is made comfortable and 

resp iCtable, Without feelings of deep sadness and shame, 
as he remember! his own neglected and desolate Inline. 
There no dwelling is to lie sien abandoned, no farm uncul- 
tivated, nu man idle, no waterfall even unemployed. Every 

person and everything performs a part toward the grand 
result, and the whole land is covered with fertile fields, with 
manufactories, and canals, ami railroads, and public edi- 
fices, and towns and cities." * * "The population 



becomes, as it were, a single set of muscles, animated by 
one heart, and directed by a common sensorium. 

"How different the condition of things in the South! 
Here, the face of the country wears the aspect of prema- 
ture old age and decay. No improvement is seen going or., 
nothing is done for posterity, no man thinks of anything 
beyond the present moment." Our lands are yearly tasked 
to their utmost capacity of production, and when ex- 
hausted, are abandoned for the youthful West." 

Slavery has no invention or skill. " Idleness, 
treachery and theft," Mr. Bancroft says, "are 
its vices." In that wonderful store-house of 
American invention, the Patent Office, the follow- 
ing are the figures of practical invention: 
North, from 1790 to 1849, inclusive, 14,559 patents. 
South, from 1790 to 1847, " 2,475 " 

North, for 1855 1,684 " 

South, for 1855 2-22 " 

A free and slave population are, relatively, con- 
servative and progressive. In the one there is 
industry, invention, skill, general comfort, prog- 
ress. In the other, speaking of it as a whole, 
these are wanting, and everything stands still. 
They resemble the different conditions in physics, 
of inertia and momentum. 

But the worst fact of slavery, in its political 
relation, is the weakness it gives a State, as against 
a foreign enemy. The condition of the slave is 
not the paradise it seems to be to some benevolent 
minds. It may be unreasonable in him not to oe 
contented with his lot, after a long endurance of 
ignorance, degradation and suffering, and when his 
manly and moral sensibilities ought to be blunted. 
But reasonable or not, the slave is not contented 
with his condition; and it is because he is not, 
and often turns his eyes in the night-watches to 
the north star, that fugitive slave laws are neces- 
sary to compel him into a bondage he seeks every 
opportunity to fly from. The slave is in our 
social and political system, but forms no part of 
it. A native of the soil and among his kind, he 
is without family, or home, or country. His 
heart, however it may be subdued by law from 
expressing itself in overt acts, is at war with the 
surrounding circumstances by which he is op- 
pressed; and he only bides his time and waits his 
opportunity to rise in the ferocity of his untamed 
nature, and confront his oppressor. As against 
a foreign enemy, he is our enemy in the midst of 
the garrison; and just as much as we extend sla- 
very, we strengthen an internal foe against our 
peace, happiness, and safety. It is painful to 
indicate this point of greatest national danger and 
weakness; but, forewarned, if we are wise, we 
may be forearmed. 

An example of the fugitive and dangerous na- 
ture of this property, before slavery had become 
augmented to its present alarming numbers, oc- 
curred during our last war with Great Britain, 
and is preserved in much angry diplomacy that 
followed the treaty of Ghent. One of the articles 
of that treaty stipulated, on the part of the British 
Government, compensation for all property taken 
by the enemy, and remaining in its hands at the 
exchange of ratifications. Under this clause com- 
pensation was claimed for fugitive slaves at that 
moment remaining with the armed forces of the 
enemy, not for all who had become scattered and 
fugitive during the progress of the war, but such 
only as adhered to the armed enemy at the mo- 



23 



ment of the exchange of ratifications. An award 
of the Emperor of Russia, to whom the construc- 
tion of so much of the treaty was referred, re- 
quired payment for this class of fugitives from the 
British Government, which, November 13, 1826, 
settled the amount by convention at §1,204,960. 
Proofs had already be%n made, and were on the 
files of our State Department, of the presence of 
the following fugitives with the enemy at the 
time of exchanging the ratifications of the treaty: 

w S ' a ,' es -. s '<™« ^veraze. Amount. 

Maryland 714 

Virginia ] 721 

South Carolina ' ]o 

Georgia g33 

Louisiana 259 

Mississippi 22 

Delaware 2 

Alabama 13 

Alexandria 3 



260 
280 
390 
390 
580 
280 
280 
390 
280 



$199,920 

481,880 

3.900 

324,870 

150.220 

6160 

560 

7,020 

840 

3,582 yl 75,370 

Almost an army of brawny men, recruited from 
our own midst, at a season of languishing mari- 
time warfare, inflamed by a sense of life-long in- 
juries, invoked to a ferocious revenge, and, rather 
than again be subdued to slavery, prepared to 
make the terrible resistance of despair.. 

The persevering reproach brought against our 
republican honor, of maintaining slavery in our 
midst, at this age of knowledge and humanity, 
found a generous consideration and even protec- 
tion against our accusers, so long as we replied ! 
the difficulty of dealing with it now, as a practi- ' 
cal evil, and the compulsion against our remon- ' 
etrances by which it was first introduced here- 
because such an answer implied that we only i 
wished and waited for a safe means of extrica- 
tion. But we now revive the reproach, and take- 
to ourselves, nationally, the ignominy of main- 1 
taming slavery, when we take sides with its prop- I 
option, and insist on it as a social and political ! 
blessing; for, if it be a blessing, there is no I 
longer any reproach in having brought it here; 1 
and, having stripped ourselves of this cover, we i 
stand in nakedness to be chastised by the scorn i 
and condemnation of all mankind. 

This brings me to the language of eminent ! 
force and truth of the gentleman from Georgia, 
par. Warner:] ° ', 

"There is not a slaveholder, in this House or out of it, but I 
• S^n'T? • P8rfeCt . | y wel ! *?t whenever slavery is tonAncd 
rrdlun certain special limits. Us future existence is doomed '• 
VLTJZ " 1 uest,on of l ™e « to its final destruction: 
6LAVIRY cannot be confined within certain specified 

limits WITHOUT PROD, CINO THE DESTRUCTION OK BOTH 
MASTER AND SLAVE." 

And if slavery, in its struggle for life, is to ex- 
pand all over the Territories, and fill the master's 
? I have shown that, proceeding 



in its present augmented ratio, colonization will 
fill the whole domain before the end of the present 
generation. And after slavery, along with it, 
shall have spread over all our Territories, what 
then ? Is not the present a mere palliative, and a 
postponement of the evil time? Slavery will then 
be crowded, and fall back on itself. What shall 
then be its cure? Shall we then extend the his- 
torical parallel, and enter on a life of robbery? or 
shall another Spartacus arise and lead away the 
hosts of slaves from our midst? or another Eunus 
erect his cruel tribunal, and bring the masters to 
indiscriminate judgment for the whole past? or 
shall we endure in our own midst, at desolated 
hearths, and in the presence of our fields spoiled 
by war and rapine, another St. Domingo? 

Warned by all this, no other Shannon shall 
swarm his barbarians on the Wakarusa, to insult, 
alarm, plunder, rob, and murder the people of 
his charge, for the fault of loving liberty and 
the laws too well, nor another Pierce joyfully 
convey to Congress, after having compelled the 
ignominious submission, that the affairs of the 
Territory are arranged " in the most satisfactory 
manner. J 

National honor, peace, happiness, and union, 
will be safe by going back and taking lessons of 
the past. This cause is the people's. It, too, 
has its representative champion. Educated into 
a personal knowledge of servitude and its in- 
stincts his vows, young as Hannibal's, were 
recorded against it. Fremont has honored his 
country; he has served science, which serves all 
mankind; he has explored a wilderness, and made 
its features familiar as a friend's; he has ascend- 
ed rivers to their springs, and climbed to mountain 
tops that looked down on the Pacific, resting in 
its immense basin quietly as a child in arms- he 
has enlarged knowledge. In all this, he has 
maintained the modesty of true merit; and in a 
time-serving age, he is as much remarkable for 
what he has not been, as for what he has been and 
is. But his best tale to remembrance is, that he 
conquered and laid the foundations of a free State 
at that uttermost limit of our empire. We trust 
the qualities he has displayed, and his honorable 
tame for his inflexible devotion to the ri°-ht; for 
this "good old cause" repels the maxims of pri- 
vate outrage for party, or of national robbery for 
national gain, but adheres to truth older than 
Christianity, and as pure— that told by Solon to 
the wise men at the feast of the tyrant of Cor- 
inth, that that is the best republic where an 
injury to the humblest citizen is an injury to the 
whole State; and that other, uttered by Socrates 
in the saddler's shop at Athens, that nothing 
whatever can be sound in politics that is not 
sound in the morals of private life. 



114 







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